Matters Memo

City of Boulder City Council Agenda Item Meeting Date: August 13, 2026 Agenda Title Strategic Planning Check-in

Staff Contact • •

Matt Chasansky, Citywide Strategic Plan, City Manager’s Office Pam Davis, Assistant City Manager

Executive Summary The purpose of this Study Session is to update Council members on the steps to develop the Citywide Strategic Plan and get advice on the World of Possibilities draft document (Attachment A), which serves as a foundation of future steps including drafting strategies, conducting engagement, and implementation. As our community encounters increasingly complex challenges, staff needs a broad and aligned approach for prioritizing projects and implementing services in a way that best meets the needs of the moment. Developing organizational strategies that are shared across departments and with City Council provides the best framework to prioritize what we must do to succeed in meeting those challenges. The challenges are many, including an increasingly constrained budget, aging infrastructure, high expectations in the community, emerging technologies, demographic shifts, and the way our community must address the significant challenges of our time that manifest in Boulder as racial equity/social resilience, climate adaptation, and affordability/economic resilience.

The Citywide Strategic Plan is a tool for aligning municipal government resources to meet these challenges. The Strategic Plan is: • •

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A system for prioritization of programs, services, projects, and initiatives. A roadmap for advancing Sustainability, Equity, and Resilience (SER) Framework goals and implementing BVCP policies in a digestible four-year increment. An instrument for meeting the needs of the moment. A way to empower all staff to do more efficient, effective, and enterprising work through all levels of the organization and in all departments.

The Strategic Plan makes it easier for staff to prioritize funding and resources, assemble teams across departments, and direct capacities to the places that are most impactful and necessary. It also assembles the language, systems, resources, and measurement tools from various City of Boulder planning documents so all our efforts are collaborative and operate without conflicting purposes or divergent goals. The Strategic Plan also benefits the work of Council by: • • •

providing a link from the leadership of Council members through strategies to the daily work of staff; serving as a method to understand, monitor, and improve the implementation of policies and legislative decisions; and bridging strategic implementation across council terms.

The Community will also benefit from the Strategic Plan when city services are operating at a highly efficient level, work is clearly prioritized and connected, and transparency increases.

Questions for Council 1. 2.

Does Council have any questions on the process for developing and implementing the 2027-2030 Citywide Strategic Plan? Which ideas within the World of Possibilities document (Attachment A) are most important to Council and are there any others that should be considered as staff moves on to developing strategies?

Alignment with City Plans and City Council History Sustainability, Equity and Resilience (SER) Framework and Citywide Strategic Plan Alignment SER Framework Goal Area Any specific SER Framework Goal Area impacts resulting from the Citywide Strategic Plan cannot be meaningfully defined or quantified because the project is an umbrella planning effort integrating all aspects of the SER Framework. Citywide Strategic Plan This project will create the 2027-2030 Citywide Strategic Plan. Staff Notes The Citywide Strategic Plan is a key component of all organizational planning and structures.

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Alignment with Additional City Plans The Citywide Strategic Plan translates the 20-year Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan (BVCP) into four-year strategy increments and creates a clearer organizational focus to inform department plans and budgets.

City Council History This will be the first City Council discussion about the 2027 – 2030 Citywide Strategic Plan.

Analysis The process to produce a new Citywide Strategic Plan began early 2026 and will continue through the first quarter of 2027. Through interviews with staff, an analysis of the previous Strategic Plan performance, application of best practices, and a literature review of comparable strategies in other cities, a process was developed to write a new set of strategies. The steps needed to develop the 2027 – 2030 Citywide Strategic Plan are: 1. Assemble Teams and Tools (April 2026, complete) Included the formation of a staff advisory team, the creation of a Prioritization Tool, and integration with data & measures and workplanning projects. 2. Gather Inputs (May – August 2026, underway) Includes consultation with staff across all departments to develop the proposals for “Inputs” that will form the foundation of the strategies and appear in the attached World of Possibilities document. 3. Translate Inputs into Strategies (August – September 2026) Will include development of draft strategies based on Inputs and the integration of aligned policy and strategy documents. 4. Engagement (September – November 2026): Will include staff and community engagement, including a Community Leaders Workshop on November 14. 5. Completion and Implementation (December 2026 – January 2027):

In the spirit of continual improvement, the 2027-2030 Strategic Plan will improve on the previous version in several ways: •

Focus on quality strategies: this new Strategic Plan will center on a set of strategies, but not discrete actions or initiatives. Those will be developed with the budget and workplanning cycle each year.

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Include integrations: the new document will describe how strategies fit into the full organizational system, including a prioritization tool, data & measures, workplanning, the Racial Equity Plan, the Climate Action Plan, the annual budget cycle, and a department-level planning system.

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Expand engagement: a process for deeper engagement with staff in all departments, an early and productive conversation with Council and Board & Commission members, and an opportunity for community members to participate.

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Emphasize implementation: support, accountability, and reporting will be mobilized for the full 4 years of implementation.

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Elevate services: though they are not within the definition of a “strategy”, it is important to make clear to the community that our commitments to city services are a priority that we must consider when developing a strategic framework.

The current phase of work, and the subject of this Study Session, is to finalize the “World of Possibilities” document. For the past few months, the City Manager’s Office has been connecting with leadership across all departments to articulate the issues that must be considered for developing strategies. Proposals for these considerations were gathered in several ways: •

“Environmental Scans” solicited proposals from leadership in every department.

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An organizational improvements workshop was held to focus on what advancements can be made internally.

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The subject matter experts from across departments who contributed to the update of the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan were brought back together in a workshop to develop proposals.

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In collaboration with the Finance and Budget Department, incorporating the results of the Long-Term Financial Strategy’s service levels study.

These efforts yielded more than 170 proposals in four categories: •

Services: what are the critically vital, mandated, and community enrichment services that are ongoing, essential to the functioning of the city, and must be prioritized?

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Planned Commitments: what are the policies in the BVCP that are ready for action and what moves should we make in the next four years? Also, are there any other planned commitments in department plans, area plans, or “blueprints” that need to be considered?

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Emerging Opportunities and Threats: are there any issues or circumstances that are not in planning documents but need the attention of the city.

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Organizational Improvements: how can the city take steps to ensure that delivery of services are fully supported, transparent, and efficient through the continual improvement of our workforce, tools and systems?

Included in the proposals were details and advice about the issues, as well as sources to ground ideas with documentation. These proposals were discussed in detail by a cross-departmental team and in the City Manager’s Office for refining and combining to become the 41 “Inputs” that comprise the World of Possibilities draft. After receiving City Council advice on these Inputs, the final document will serve as a resource for the teams that will be assembling data and resources and drafting the strategies.

Anticipated Fiscal and Workplan Impacts This project is currently funded in the City Manager’s Office 2026 department budget and is accommodated within current staff workplan capacity.

Equity Analysis Equity and belonging considerations are deeply integrated into the Citywide Strategic Plan development and implementation processes. Through Strategic Plan development, staff and community engagement will incorporate practices called for in the Racial Equity Plan. Staff members from the Communications and Engagement Department and Office of Equity and Belonging are embedded in the staff advisory team to help steward these efforts. This advisory group also developed and deployed an objective prioritization matrix to include advancing equity goals as a

key criterion. Community engagement will include specific work with Community Connectors throughout the process as well as a Community Leaders Workshop with representatives of community partner organizations and an online questionnaire open to the whole community. Implementation of the Strategic Plan strategies will require projects or service adjustments to use the racial equity instrument to assess the specific impacts of major actions. Then, support will be provided in developing, using, and measuring the results as the strategies are implemented over the next four years.

Climate, Resilience, and Sustainability Considerations Similar to the approach on equity, climate considerations are integrated into the process to both develop and implement the Citywide Strategic plan.

Community Engagement There will be two opportunities for community members to contribute to the Strategic Plan: •

An online questionnaire will be provided in the 4th quarter through which any community member can respond to draft strategies.

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The Community Leaders Workshop will host City Council Members as well as some members of Boards & Commissions, Community Connectors, and representatives of partner community agencies for a facilitated session to respond to draft strategies, identify areas for improvement, and assist in prioritizing options.

In addition, an important improvement to the process will be engagement for all city staff. An invitation for any member of staff to participate in online engagement or selfguided team conversations later this year. The goal of this engagement will be to benefit from the perspective of our colleagues that are most connected to everyday life in Boulder.

Next Steps for City Council Community Engagement and the Community Leaders Workshop — a save-the-date invitation was distributed to members of City Council for the November 14, 2026 workshop. Further information will be provided as the date approaches. Staff also

invites City Council members to help encourage participation with the online engagement in the community when it is launched later this year. City Council Priority Setting — Completion of the 2027-2030 Citywide Strategic Plan will precede the setting of 2027 Council Priorities to encourage priorities that align directly to established strategies. Final Review by Council — Staff anticipates bringing the final draft of the 2027-2030 Citywide Strategic Plan before Council in January 2027 as part of pre-retreat activities.

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Attachments Attachment A - World of Possibilities Draft