The Boca Raton City Council held a strategic planning workshop on May 7, 2025, from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM at 6500 Congress Ave. Facilitated by Trainnovations, the session aimed to align council and staff on long-term visionary goals for 2030 and 2050, focusing on high-level outcomes rather than operational details. The day included public comment, facilitated discussions on six strategic focus areas, and identification of next steps.
Well, good morning and welcome to the first of the two days of the City of Ocaraton strategic planning sessions for 2025. It is Wednesday, May 7th, 2025. The time is 9 o'clock. Our first item of business will be the Pledge of Allegiance. Well, everyone please rise and join in. I pledge allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, my nation. Indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Well, welcome. This is always an exciting time for the city, especially in our centennial year. We're very pleased, and I'll welcome in a moment our facilitators from Trainovations, Trina Polium and Melinda Miller. And Sarah, I did not know her last name, though. Thank you, Sarah Spurlock. Welcome. Thank you. Glad to have you all here. I'm glad that we can all be around the table to think about some important strategic goals from a very high-level perspective. Over the course of the two days, I understand we're going to have eight different presentations from staff that have been curated in a thoughtful way to get us to find some consensus on some key areas. We're going to continue to try to have open dialogue in the spirit of having consensus through collaboration. We're going to focus on strategy and visionary goals for our city and where we're going. We're going to try to avoid to get into the weeds, and I will do my best myself too on specific items, budget line items, other concerns, and hope that we can consider the long-term goals for the city in the most thoughtful way and find that we are in a clearer place and that staff has more clarity on the direction that we want to go in. So if there's no other comments now, I'll welcome Trina Polyam to kick us off, please. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Mayor Singer, Deputy Mayor Knockless, and Council members, good morning, City Manager, Mr. Brown, and all of the staff, both in the conversation. All of us will be participating today. Our goal today is to make uh this very participatory. The staff needs to hear from you all as an elected body on a very visionary level. Where we're going. What is this city going to be like in 2050? That's the those are the decisions that you will make today, and for the rest of this year, this council is directing what the city will look like in 10 years, 20 years. This is huge generational decisions that you're making, and we would like to discuss on a very high level. What do you need? What will it look like? The council needs to hear from staff. What do you think? What do you believe? How do you feel about where you're going and what you're doing and what you have to do to meet the council vision? For the benefit of the community, I would like to uh quickly introduce us. Thank you for for being here, everyone, and uh everyone who is online as well. My name is Trina. I am joined by Melinda Miller and Sarah Spurlock. We are the team uh that has uh been charged with doing this project for the City of Boca Raton. We um have been at this for 30 years in many, many cities across the state of Florida, and uh we only work for local government. So we understand the challenges that cities uh have and we are going to help the City of Boca Raton overcome some of those challenges and be supervisionary and continue to be the benchmark and the best practice for the state of Florida. So thank you all for being here and doing that. These topics have been carefully uh considered.