Page last updated on September 7, 2021 at 12:59 pm
Welcome to the mid-year report on the activities of the City of Bloomington! So this may be of most interest to city government nerds -- and I’m among them -- but it’s also an important way that your government is being transparent and accountable. Since I’ve become Mayor, we’ve worked to really measure how we in city government are doing our jobs -- what our goals are for each year and how well we are accomplishing them. Say what we’ll do, and then do what we say.
It’s contrary to some old (and bad) political advice, that says don’t put a date and a number in the same sentence…but that’s exactly what we need to do, and in fact, do. With more than 600 goals for 2019 in fact, tied directly into each budget year…
So the 2019 goals for The City of Bloomington budget were established back in the summer of 2018 and were part of the budget adopted by City Council last fall.
And to the point, the goals embodied in the 2019 budget reflect several big priorities of our city administration:
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to support and maintain public safety and civility
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to help foster a vibrant and prosperous sector of jobs and enterprises
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to create affordable/workforce housing
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to enhance our quality of place and active community engagement
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to steward our city-owned assets and our natural spaces, and
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to invest in innovative solutions
All in a community committed to sustainability, inclusion, and opportunity.
More specifically, the 2019 mid-year report reflects fourteen city departments reporting on nineteen individual components of city functions and their corresponding goals. In total, 611 goals are identified for 2019. Of these goals, as of June 30, just under one-quarter have already been accomplished, about 70% are in progress toward the end of the year, and about 5% are determined to be inactive -- either we’re not going to do them this year or something changed the goal or the like. All of us in the city administration will continue to work hard to accomplish the remaining goals and will provide a full end-of-year report after the end of 2019.
So I just wanted to let you all know this detailed mid-year report is available. I want to thank from the bottom of my heart the 850 or so employees who do all this incredible work on behalf of all of us, and encourage you to dig in and learn about the goals and where we are, from crime reports to swimming lessons, from sidewalks or potholes repaired to gallons of water purified, from fire department response times to affordable housing units to animals adopted. It’s your government, and this report helps you check out how it’s going.