All

right.

Good afternoon, everyone.

First up on the agenda.

Chris, would you like to introduce our visitors with shocking shocky consulting?

Good

afternoon, Council.

So Shocky Consulting, they're back in town this week as we're getting ready to kind of get into phase four of overall comprehensive plan.

So this is where we're gonna start to get more in depth on the goals and strategies about what the future of Council Bluffs and our downtown are gonna look like moving forward.

Tomorrow evening, uh, we'll be hosting our second public workshop specific to our comprehensive plan,

and

then Shock will be back in November to do another follow-up public workshop about our downtown master plan.

So with that, I'll turn it over to Jeff Williamson with Jeff Williams with Shocky to kind of lead you through the next phase.

Chris, thank you very much.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council members, Jeff Williams with Shockey Consulting.

I'm here with Carrie Conneller, who also with Shocky Consulting.

Uh so we'll take a few minutes uh to give you a bit of an update about where we are as you know.

We come back as we wrap up each of the five phases of putting together new comprehensive plan and downtown master plan for council bluffs.

On the screen there is a vision statement, and we're kind of locked and set with that.

And so this throughout this process, we're building vision statements to guiding principles, which you'll see into a moment, that ultimately leading to goals and then strategies, so specific action items as it relates to the physical growth and development of the city uh through 2050.

So

our schedule is about 15 months schedule and five different project phases, uh, and you'll see right now the green bar on the screen is telling you uh what we've done so far.

So we've launched in discovery phase, and thanks to work for with you and city staff and public, got lots of information about council bluffs, and then we moved ourselves over to the vision and goal setting portions of this project.

So that overall vision statement came through that visioning process.

And now, as Chris mentioned, we're at a place now where goals and specific strategies are starting to get locked in, and you'll see from this point moving forward, they'll move to what we call them strategies and to scenarios.

So, really understanding where some of these best practices and recommendations would be applied and how they would be achieved.

Uh that's either through understanding their timing or the potential cost or who the partners are working on them.

If I jump back through and then

let's see if I can jump back here, there

we go.

Um, and again, when the work beginning in 2027 is looking at the ultimate plan finalization and the adoption phase of things.

So we have work together in terms of putting the plan together.

We will work together, is in terms of reviewing material information, and that's happening throughout the entire community.

So we will be back with more workshops, even post the ones Chris talked about in January, where we'll start to people can see the plan itself and its full content.

So

when we kind of say in vision and goal setting, what we were doing, continue through workshops through online engagement survey, other folks going out and championing the plan, was getting a sense of what uh the community was feeling about council bluffs and what they were optimistic about in the future.

And then those visions and principles kind of put together and it's gonna bridging those things that are part of both the citywide, the comprehensive plan and the downtown plan.

So that vision statement and the guiding principles will be shared among both plans.

It'll be when you start to get to the goal pieces of this, uh, and understanding when we say downtown, what does that even mean?

And a lot of conversation about the boundary of downtown and what are those elements, and then putting goals together for each of those plans.

So

I mentioned guiding principles, and I won't read them off on the screen, but these are 10 guiding principles.

These are things that are overarching elements.

These are setting the foundation for individual goals and strategies.

These are also aligned with the state of Iowa's uh smart growth and planning principles.

Um, so as you look at the list in each of them and things that you would expect to see in a plan and document of this type.

Take a look at the graphics to the left.

This plan will be driven a lot by visual elements and visual references.

So certainly it's uh a text to be looked at as you're setting policy, but we also want this to be a document that people use and are comfortable with and are easily able to navigate their way through.

So when we're setting guiding principles, and then you'll see framework in a moment for um strategies as well.

Um we're driving a lot of things through icons and through images.

So, again, these guiding principles begin to translate what some of the state goals are in terms of community growth, and then are setting again that foundation for putting together strategies.

So, this process really has been about identifying understanding issues, what kind of opportunities are there, and these are all issues and opportunities unique to council bluffs.

Then how are we going to set goals?

What are some of the aspirations?

But ultimately, it's making our way all the way over to the right to strategy.

What are the actionable steps that somebody can take to reach plan goals and to be able to measure success?

So

I mentioned about strategies and strategies framework, and strategies basically, it's an action.

It's what can be done that will help fulfill the overall goals and principles of the plan.