Southlake defines direction for future planning

Southlake City Council met with staff members last week in a winter workshop intended to help define the city’s strategic focus and consider alterations to its strategic “map.”

While City Council members had no major concerns, they did spend about an hour discussing a variety of issues with staff members.

“We always use the winter workshop to confirm our strategic direction,” City Manager Shana Yelverton said. “It sets direction for what we do with the budget.”

City staff uses the map, a collection of concepts and goals, to help them make decisions. For example, when they are composing the budget, staff members must prove that their decisions support the city’s direction as outlined in the map.

During the casual work session, City Council members rotated around work stations with topics including, “quality development,” “mobility/infrastructure,” “safety/security,” among others. Yelverton said the more casual environment is beneficial and the staff learns a lot from the varied conversations that take place.

At one table, Public Works Director Bob Price talked about how the city continues to adjusting signal timing to improve traffic along Southlake Boulevard.

At another table, Mayor Pro Tem Laura Hill spoke about the importance of varied development.

“We have to bring people to this city from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and get them to come here from Texas 114, not 1709,” she said.

Mayor John Terrell said he was comfortable with the direction the city was headed from its strategic mapping.

“Based on the results it seems like it’s working,” he said. “That doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.”

He added the city is constantly working at improvement.

“It’s not like we work on this one time a year and look at how we can make things better,” he said. “It’s constant.”

Following the workshop, Yelverton said the Fiscal Year 2016 budget would be the next focus for the city staff.

This story was originally published January 27, 2015 at 11:14 AM with the headline "Southlake defines direction for future planning."