McMinnville To Provide Weekly Public Updates On Strategic Plan

City of McMinnville applying public and internal stakeholder survey feedback in strategic plan with weekly online updates.

City Administrator Nolan Ming said they had taken the survey and put action items into a plan for the next three to five years with goals to hit. He said  the city’s goal is to be as transparent as possible with daily and long-term work.

We don’t want to be in a vacuum doing things without the public understanding how we’re spending their tax paying money…their tax dollars,” Ming said. “So we feel like there’s better trust when there’s transparency.”

Ming said the city has implemented an online reporting system that not only keeps the internal stakeholders on track, it also provides weekly website updates. He said they are currently working on the mobile device interface and should have that up and running in about a week.

Ming said the city had already taken action based on that stakeholder feedback. He said generally the staff and public have expressed a heavy interest in public safety related to fire and police departments and as  a result the city was improving recruitment. He said these days recruitment is an issue no matter where you live so new strategies were needed.

“We’re going out to schools and other organizations to share what we’re doing in both police and fire departments,” Ming said. “We’ve got a police academy and a fire academy for the public so they can get involved and understand what we do. And we even have a police academy for high schoolers.”

Ming said the city was fully invested in using the strategic plan to accomplish their goals. He said Reliable Infrastructure was a good focus for explaining how this works.  He said when we talk about reliable infrastructure we are looking at improved streets, improved storm water systems, and improved water and sewer systems. Ming said that means integrating water projects with paving plans.

“So when Public Works is bidding out paving projects they need to figure out which water lines need to be replaced and coordinate that with the Water Department,” Ming said. “So they are working together and they are not going to get ahead of each other.”

Ming said the sewer line inspection plan and storm water flood reduction program would be reported and updated in the strategic plan as well. He said in this manner transparency and communication occur both internally within departments and externally to the public.

“The underlying system is Microsoft Teams with Project Tracking and Power BI,” Ming said. “The expectation is that each department director updates Microsoft Teams in their portion of each goal in the strategic initiatives adn then it is updated in real time to the project tracker.”