After more than 18 months of community conversation about Decatur’s to-do list for the next decade, an initial draft of the 2020 Strategic Plan is now available, following a June 21 presentation to a joint gathering of the City Commission and Planning Commission.
Whether you’re new to the process or here since the beginning, you’re now encouraged to provide final thoughts on the emerging plan. Online public review and commenting will remain open until July 23.
This is the latest phase of public review of a work-in-progress. The discussion began even before the official launch of the community engagement process in January of 2020 and before a global pandemic forced rethinking everywhere about how to safely gather in groups. For a summary of the process and how we adapted to pandemic restrictions, see our process overview.
To get to this point, more than a thousand people who live or work in the City contributed their hopes and concerns, progressively narrowing the focus of the discussion. That sorting process led to proposed Vision and Mission Statements that assert commitments and shape the standards for measuring success for policies, programs, and projects over the next 10 years.
What you’ll see in the draft Plan is a tracing of the route from open-ended conversation to the Vision and Mission Statements, to recommendations that fall under the six themes that emerged from the process and were validated in review stages up until now. Those six, intersecting themes: equity and racial justice, mobility, affordable housing, climate action, civic trust, and economic development.
This is not the end of the process. Responses to this draft will help City staff and the consulting team refine a follow-up version, clarifying and correcting elements where necessary. And from there, the revised draft will work its way towards consideration by the City Commission, including a concluding opportunity for public comment.