Having listened to city staff and citizens, the city council tonight will adopt a list of goals and objectives for the year 2003 that it hopes are specific enough to guide next year’s budget.

That may be an exercise in subtraction, not addition.

“The present list contains much more than can be done next year,” Mayor Darlene Kordonowy said. “The council will have to identify the priorities. If they don’t, then the staff and the administration will have to make the choices.”

Formal adoption of goals and objectives is an integral part of the council’s plan to bring city spending into closer synch with “citizen priorities.” A critical element of that plan is to base budgets on the council’s goals and objectives, to be formulated after considering input received at hearings.

Citizen feedback was surprisingly meager, Kordonowy said, and did not help in the winnowing process.

“Generally, people wanted to add new goals,” she said.

The draft goals run the gamut. Some are highly specific new projects like creating a small-boat haul-out facility. Others are so broad and general they might be characterized as aphorisms – “maintain the highest levels of leadership, integrity, service and teamwork” for the police, or “provide high-quality service to customers of the city and to the public” for all departments.

While the list is not perfect, the general trend is towards more specificity, council chair Michael Pollock said.

“Some are statements of intent rather than specific goals,” he said. “But relative to last year, we’re much farther ahead of the curve. These statements are more relevant to the budget than what we have had in the past.”

Some of the more specific new goals are: develop a plan for the reclaimed Vincent Road landfill, and a strategy to preserve at least 1 percent of island land for farming; implement a forestry management plan, the non-motorized transportation plan and a Winslow parking plan; review and revise the affordable-housing ordinance; implement the shoreline master program; find a location for and design a small-boat haul-out facility; and redesign Waterfront Park, including a new restroom and public dock.

“What we want to do with this is to ask each of the departments what they need in the way of resources to perform these tasks,” Pollock said. “For example, can the shoreline master program be done in-house, or do we need consultants?”

Too much to do?

Kordonowy describes the proposed list of goals and objectives as front-end loaded – too ambitious to be accomplished.

“It’s not a wish list, it’s much more than that,” she said. “These are important things that have been on people’s minds. But we have to cut it down.”

Pollock favors getting estimates from the departments about how much each of the appointed tasks is going to cost, and only then trimming the list to fit the budget.

“Once those cost estimates come back, we can start figuring out the trade-offs,” he said.

Kordonowy agrees that staff and administration feedback to the council will be important, and not just with respect to what the council wants to do.

“We need to let the council know how much time and resources are required to fulfill our present day-to-day responsibilities,” she said. “We don’t have the people or the resources to do all of these things above and beyond what we are doing now.

“And if the council wants us to eliminate some of the projects we are doing, we need to have that discussion, but so far, we have not.”

The goals and objectives do not address any major construction projects. Those projects, which comprise a significant portion of city spending, will be dealt with in the capital facilities plan, a separate process that also involves public input and the eventual adoption by council of a priority list.

Veteran council member Norm Wooldridge said that in past years, the council has forfeited the opportunity to shape the budget by failing to adopt its goals and objectives until too late – sometimes after the budget is set.

But he cautioned that setting priorities will be necessary.

“The list contains more than can possibly be accomplished,” Wooldridge said. “This time, we really have a chance to influence the budget process, but if this council wants to be responsible, it is going to have to prioritize.”