Date: 1/5/2024
Tags: "City Matters"
Welcome to 2024!
As we were approaching the New Year, someone asked me if I could come up with a catchy phrase that would stand as our motto for the New Year. Immediately, my mind started coming up with rhymes that we could use such as “Darien will do more in 24,” or “Darien residents will see more in 24.” When I thought about this, I laughed and immediately thought “how corny” these phrases are, and they do nothing to assist us as we plan our city’s goals for the coming year. The issues that we can identify early in 2024 as well as those that will occur over the next twelve months will pose some serious challenges to our elected officials, administration, staff and our residents, and we need to take a detailed approach as we lay out our planning for the year.
Here at the City of Darien, we are always planning for our city’s future; when we begin our budget process next month, we will construct a budget document that not only covers our revenue and expenditures over the Fiscal Year 25, it will show transfers to our Capital Projects Fund over the next three fiscal years. The Capital Project Fund includes items in our City’s Capital Improvement Plan which is a multi-year plan identifying capital projects to be funded or identified during a three-year planning period. This demonstrates that it is not so much to have a plan, as it is to be continuously planning throughout the year and into the future. We conduct an extensive planning process as we choose not to be reactionary, but rather proactive in our approach to governing your city.
As we progress through the coming year, we will do so without the catchy phrases, and take a long-term look at our city’s future. As early as late January, we will put out a RFP or Request for Proposals to companies that conduct strategic planning in municipalities such as Darien. Strategic Planning is a process followed by many municipalities, and our goal is to develop a Strategic Plan that will take us through the next four years. The strategic planning process will include data from different stakeholders and will ask staff, elected officials, key committees and organizations as well as the public for their input. While this process will provide goals for our future growth, we will be mindful of events that may impact their implementation.
We have been and always will be planning for a better future for our city, and developing a Strategic Plan is one way of ensuring that the City of Darien continues to grow and maintain its status as “a nice place to live.”