Middletown City Manager Douglas Adkins

www.cityofmiddletown.org

Welcome to 2017

JANUARY10, 20171

I hope everyone had a great holiday season and New Year and nowwe all get back to the daily workday and 2017 projects.

I spent a lot of my first year in 2015 assessing where wewere as a city and assembling my staff.  In 2016, we started with aconcept of rebuilding Middletown to sustainable revenue levels where every yearwe have the funding available to pave our streets, fix our parks and offer agreat quality of life.  We mapped out how many additional families andjobs it might take to reach that sustainable revenue level.

Now it’s time to turn the concept into an action plan. 2017 will see the creation of a new Master Plan for the city.  The lastMaster Plan was completed in 2005.  It was a very thorough document thatlisted a lot of great concepts and ideas.   The document also hadseveral fatal problems.

First, City Council and staff never really adopted the 2005Master Plan as the vision for the city.  We didn’t budget and plan usingthat document.  It often sat on the shelf in all of our offices assomething aspirational but not practical and real.

Second, the recession made the Master Plan almost completelyobsolete.  As we got into 2008-2009, budget revenues dried up, the citywent into lay-off mode, capital projects stalled, and any aspirational goalswere abandoned in an attempt to minimize disruption to core public safety andother services.  Even if it was a good plan, the recession took away somuch of our revenues that there was nothing left to implement good newideas for the city.

The recession is over.  Income tax revenues were at thehighest level in a couple decades in 2016.  So now is the time to move usforward again.

This Master Plan is going to be different from theprevious  plan.  The 2005 plan was aspirational.  Pie in the skyideas.   This plan is designed to be much more practical andoperational in nature.

We know about what revenue levels we need to take care of cityoperations in a sustainable way.  We know about how many jobs and/or newfamilies it will take to reach that level.  This plan is first andforemost, the plan to gain those jobs and families to reach our requiredrevenue levels.

I’m going to challenge the city in a way that hasn’t been donein recent memory.  I’m going to not only ask the hard questions, but offerpossible solutions to decade old problems.  You’ll like some of it. You won’t like other parts of it.  My only request is that if you hatesome piece of what I’m doing, tell me why, but also offer an alternative. Part of our problems in the past have stemmed from seeing hard problems andjust giving up instead of pushing through them.  I’d rather fight over howto fix it than ignore it and watch it continue. It’s easy to justbash and complain, but that doesn’t keep us moving forward.  And it’s wellpast time for all of us to move forward together and finish fixing this city.

We’llstart the new master  plan with the sustainable revenueframework I’ve been talking about for over a year now.  On top of that,we’ll add in the Community Visioning project completed by the Community BuildingInstitute and Middletown Moving Forward.  The sustainable framework iswhat we need. The community visioning is what we want as a community.

As the visioning document is completed,  CBI, MMFand I will be rolling out the concepts captured in that document to askthe question, “Did we get it right?”   “What, if anything, isstill missing?”  As we discuss the results, I’ll take this document toCity Council and ask, “Do you believe in the concepts brought forward in theCommunity Visioning process and are you ready to adopt them in full or in partas part of the policy of the city?”

If the answer is yes, then the famework and the visioning willflavor the rest of the planning process.  As we look at economicdevelopment, housing, etc., we’ll want to make sure that each piece isconsistent with the sustainable framework and the community’s vision of what Middletown shouldbe.  Ideally, we’ll create a document that is consistent throughout withthe needs and wants of our residents.   Housing choices will beconsistent with adding families and jobs.  Transportation choices will beconsistent with the community’s vision for pedestrian, bicycle, automobile andmass transit opportunities throughout the city.  And so on.

As we look at each piece of the puzzle, we’ll be rolling themout to the public, discussing them, and eventually seeking Council support thatthey are ready to adopt each piece as the policy of the city.  Futurebudgets and capital projects should reflect those goals.

If youfollow this blog, you’re going to hear from me a lot this year.  Welcometo 2017!