Avondale City Council Strategic Planning Workshop – October 15, 2025
Avondale City Council Strategic Planning Workshop – October 15, 2025
The Avondale City Council held a strategic planning workshop on October 15, 2025, to update the city's five-year strategic plan. The session, facilitated by external consultants, built on previous stakeholder engagement and a prior day's discussions with community panels. Council members, the city manager, and department heads deliberated on the city's vision, strategic outcome areas, and draft strategies. No formal votes were taken; decisions were reached by consensus.
Icebreaker Activity
- Council members shared six-word hopes for 2030, including: "restaurants businesses successful," "trail systems will be connected," "economic development, play, thriving, safe," and "residents will feel connected to city."
Budget Update (Presented by Renee, Finance Director)
- General fund revenues are running 5% above forecast and 11% above budget year-to-date, driven by sales tax and permitting revenue.
- Sales tax trends: retail sales holding strong, contracting tax (one-time) boosting revenue, but not sustainable for ongoing expenses.
- Forecast assumes 5% equivalent annual employee cost increases, a compensation study underway, and healthcare cost increases.
- Ongoing revenue plateau expected in fiscal 2026-2027 due to loss of residential rental sales tax, leaving a ~$2 million gap each year.
- General fund balance (above stabilization and capital reserve) projected at $30.6 million by fiscal 2030.
- Budget process timeline: first work session late March, recommended budget early April, tentative adoption May, final adoption June.
- Citizen bond committee recommendations expected next month.
- House bill on food tax (capped at current rate) passed House; Senate action pending.
Stakeholder Engagement Feedback (Presented by Janae)
- Community meetings (Cafecitos and evening) attracted over 55 residents; also input via Avondale Connect and social media.
- Key themes: desire for a welcoming community, dedicated staff, strong community pride, balancing growth, and economic development opportunities.
- Strengths: customer-focused service, organizational culture (helpful, kind, professional), sense of community, responsiveness.
- Challenges: community engagement gap, responsiveness expectations, balancing growth, and lack of prioritization.
- Opportunities: economic development, leveraging assets (open space, water), engaging community, cultivating partnerships.
Post-it Activity: Preserve and Achieve
- Council members wrote on yellow post-its what is true today they want to preserve (e.g., family-friendly, safe, talented staff, efficient government, strong community pride).
- On orange post-its, what is not true today they want to achieve (e.g., grocery stores across city, connected trails and light rail, zero homelessness/food insecurity, affordable housing, veteran housing, high-speed transit, free transportation, no traffic).
- Themes identified: connected engaged community, safety (broadened to include environmental), economic development, housing, transportation, effective government, programming for youth/special needs, natural resources.
Strategic Vision and Outcome Areas
Vision Statement (Revised Draft Agreed Upon)
"In Avondale, we embrace the future with confidence by fostering innovation and empowering all residents and businesses to aspire, achieve, and accelerate to reach their full potential."
- Council supported integrating the three A's (aspire, achieve, accelerate) from the city's branding.
- The statement will be refined to avoid duplication with other cities' vision statements.
Strategic Outcome Areas (Five Big Rocks)
- Economic Growth and Prosperity – Focus on job creation, workforce preparation, business growth, high-quality entertainment/retail, attainable and diverse housing, tourism, and infrastructure supporting development.
- Community Well-being – Encompasses safety (broadly defined, including public safety, air/water quality, emergency preparedness), health care access, recreation, natural resources (parks, trails, wetlands), social services (food insecurity, homelessness), and code enforcement for beautification.
- Connected and Engaged Community – Emphasis on communication strategies, community events, technology (including AI), multilingual outreach, investing in community spaces, and fostering partnerships.
- Resilient Infrastructure and Transportation – Prioritizing road maintenance, multimodal connectivity (pedestrian, bike, trails), water/sewer infrastructure, flood control, collaboration with regional partners, and planning for State Route 30.
- Innovative and Effective Government – Focus on streamlined processes, strategic partnerships, responsible financial planning (including grant pursuit), attracting/retaining a highly competent workforce that reflects the community, and fostering innovation and transparency.
Discussion of Strategies (Per Outcome Area)
- Council provided input on draft strategies for each area, emphasizing specificity where appropriate (e.g., mentioning wastewater treatment expansion, annual road maintenance investment).
- Strategies will be refined by staff and consultants, then brought back for final adoption in June 2025.
Key Outcomes
- Consensus on revised vision statement (to be finalized).
- Agreement on five strategic outcome areas as the framework for the next five years.
- Detailed feedback on strategies and success indicators for each area.
- Staff to produce a draft strategic plan document, circulate for final council review, and adopt by June 2025.
- The workshop concluded with appreciation for staff and facilitators, and commitment to implement the plan.
Note: This workshop did not include a consent calendar or public testimony period; all discussion was among council, staff, and consultants.
Meeting Transcript
Councilmember Solario. Here. Councilmember Weiss. Here. Councilmember White. Here. Mayor Paneda. Here. And Vice Mayor Nielsen has an excused absence today. All right. Well, good morning, everybody. Welcome back to another day of discussion and strategic planning. And at this time, I will turn it over to Nancy. Thank you before us I apologize. But first of all, I'm not standing up the week, and I think we have some other people who are the better intelligence. But I do like to start out with the thoughts. I don't know if you realize that we have someone that threw up the pitch. Oh yeah? That's cool. I didn't know if we were just taking it. I didn't hear from our fame councilmember Solario who got to throw out the first pitch at some games. So I got to throw out the first pitch. I'm a huge Dodger fan, originally from Southern California. So I know. So I was asked to throw out the first pitch yesterday against the Reds game, which is kind of big for me too because the Reds stayed at my hotel and I've known so many of them. So it was kind of really cool to be there while the Dodgers were there and the Reds. A little embarrassing at the same time because some of the coaches were there and they're like, we should have taught you a little bit more when we were there. But it went good. He caught it. It didn't, I didn't pull a 50 cent where it went on the side or anything. I made it, and um I'm like, I had pressure because you know Smoky the Bear went before me, and I'm like, if he has that big helmet head on and he can make it, I can make it. So it was really nice. It was one of those opportunities like I was telling Mayor, like he said you'll always remember. So it was really great. Well, uh again, thank you, uh uh Mayor and Council. So I just uh wanted to point out a couple things and and uh talk about how staff uses the strategic plan. So in your uh packet, you were provided about five pages of accomplishments since the uh last um strategic plan was created, and and I promise you that is just a highlight. Um Anisa and Tracy went through it to try to get it down to re readable uh size. Um but the reason it's not to talk about what staff has done, but to show that how important the strategic plan is and how we use it to guide our day-to-day decisions and how we assign funding, how we assign priorities to projects to figure out how we're gonna get uh things done. Working for seven bosses, uh just having seven bosses is sometimes complicated. This is the unifying document. This is the document that provides a clear statement of work, a clear statement of expectations, and a clear, in my opinion, a priority list. We use it uh to set agenda items, uh again, we use it to set funding. So it's just a very, very important document. Um, and so I'm looking forward. Um, this is my first strategic plan with this uh council. Um we have a good two years at least uh as a group, and so I I'm looking forward to the outcomes today, which will be a new uh strategic plan that has your stamp on it and will set our vision usually for at least two years, but often for four to five years. So with that, I will turn it over to uh our team and we'll go from there. Thank you. All right.
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