In a move signaling a forward-looking approach, Altona town council, now one year into its mandate, has unveiled a comprehensive strategic plan to guide the community’s development over the next three years.
“When our term started, we looked back to the previous four years and reviewed the progress on goals set by that council,” said Mayor Harv Schroeder. “After a year of working on those goals and receiving feedback and requests from the community, it was clear that we needed to look to the future now. We knew that we wanted input from the community on our plan.”
The process began with an online community engagement survey earlier this year to get a broad view of things that are important to Altona residents. Over 200 people responded.
“We also brought together about 25 people from the community, aiming for a representative demographic sample, to discuss issues that were important to them in a focus group, giving us a deeper understanding of what was important,” Schroeder noted.
These steps helped council shape the long-term plan for Altona, along with adding their own perspectives as elected leaders. They then met with administration over the period of several months, refining our plan and giving it focus, finally boiling it down to three key strategies, one of which is a commitment to making fiscally responsible decisions.
“Taxpayers of Altona expect that we will put their tax dollars to good use,” the mayor stressed. “To us, making good decisions with money starts from having good information.”
This strategy, Schroeder added, includes using data to make decisions that are right for the community, the use of sustainable funding models, finding grant and funding opportunities, investing in the care and upkeep of existing assets, allocating appropriate resources to support operations, exploring new and different solutions to operational needs, and collaborating with community and regional partners.
The practice of good environmental stewardship will also play a key role.
“Taking care of the environment means taking care of our future,” said Schroeder. “We are committed to looking for opportunities to reduce Altona’s impact on the environment and to improve Altona’s climate resiliency.”
Based on the community’s growth over the last few years, preparation for sustainable growth is another priority.
“Altona has been growing over the last few years and will continue to grow. It’s important that all the sectors of Altona are growing at a similar rate,” Schroeder said. “We can’t have a big boom in industrial growth without also having more housing, and we can’t have a big population change without preparing for an increase in need for municipal services.”
While these three strategies will be applied across all the town’s departments and decision making, four areas of focus came up in the consultation process as most important: recreation and culture, transportation infrastructure, economic development, and organizational strength.
“We have great recreational and cultural assets that exist because people who came before us had the vision and dreams to plan for it,” noted Schroeder “Over the past year, or few years, we’ve had a lot of dreamers come to us with big plans for future recreation and want to make sure we are making the right decisions for the future with the space we have available. We will use our key strategies to care for and maintain what we already have and create a long-term plan for upgrading or renewing these assets.”
Throughout the planning process, Schroeder said council heard a lot of feedback from the community focus group concerning roads, sidewalks, and trails.
“We heard loud and clear that taking care of the infrastructure that keeps us moving is critical, and are committed to doing so, and preparing for the future.”
Developing the local economy will also be a priority.
“Creating a good environment for economic growth paves the way for a vibrant, prosperous, and resilient community,” said Schroeder “We’ll use our key strategies to promote and support economic growth, including supporting the skilled worker pool by continuing to attract and support the integration of newcomers into our community and by preparing for development across all sectors.”
“Supporting those who provide essential services to the community is another important focus,” he continued. “Ensuring that those services remain excellent means that we need to focus on the strength of the organization. We’ll use our key strategies to make sure that operations are well supported and have the appropriate resources available.
“Being a strong organization also means building strong relationships. We’ll continue to focus on our regional and community collaborations and move forward in a spirit of reconciliation.”
Moving forward, council will be setting deadlines and target goals in their plan to implement these strategies, and working to make sure the entire municipal team is all on the same page.
They also want to continue to keep the community informed on how these strategies are being applied.
“We will make sure that the community is up to date on our progress on these initiatives, including regular updates that will be provided through council meetings, our website, and through our other communication channels,” said Schroeder.
