City lays out plan of action to address goals and survey feedback

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. (News-Press NOW) -- City leaders unveiled an extensive 12- to 18-month strategic plan of action for improving city services and addressing top priorities from a recent community survey, a plan that officials are confident will produce change. 

A packed room of city officials and department leaders met Tuesday afternoon for early but critical talks on a list of targeted goals and initiatives they plan to implement in response to the survey, combining feedback from all of the city's departments with new survey data to pinpoint the most effective strategies.

The 24-page document lays out action steps and measurable goals for virtually every department, particularly public safety, public works, and community development.

"Going forward, we will add public work sessions where department leaders will provide councilmembers updates on work and projects," City Manager Mike Schumacher said. "And move the needle on the customer satisfaction survey."

Roughly 600 people participated in the community survey this spring asking residents to rate their satisfaction with the city's key services and provide feedback on community needs. Top priorities include enforcement of city codes, maintenance of city streets, quality of police services and effectiveness of city communication.

City officials intend to address code enforcement concerns through a wide-range of objectives, including quarterly walkthroughs in high-blight areas, meetings with neighborhood groups, developing shared databases between police and code enforcement officials and selecting neighborhoods for full scale clean up annually.

City officials said a critical piece of the plan is improved communication with residents, whether through community outreach, social media or new QR codes at nearly every facility for community feedback.

"It's a starting point. We all look at it as how do we better communicate? How do we better react? Mayor John Josendale said. "We'll have regular meetings which again are open to the public to come in and listen to where each of those departments are."

The public safety portion of the plan also lays out a variety of planned efforts, including identifying the city's top crime hot spots, holding bi-weekly crime intelligence discussions, community meetings with neighborhoods and new staff positions geared toward crime analytics, among other plans.

City officials are determined to show they're serious about not only working closely with the community to address those areas of need but improving internal processes and procedures themselves. 

"One of the things that we need to do is everybody with the city understanding what the other person does, how they do it, and how it affects each person and each stakeholder with the city," District 4 City Councilmember Michael Grimm said. "I think this is a really good start with being able to engage the people and show them what we do and let them know just how their tax dollars are being spent."

Discussions also focused heavily on heightened efforts to improve St. Joseph's critical gap in housing, which has contributed to steep declines in younger demographics and steady population loss overall.

The city is rolling out a new program called SeeClickFix that allows residents to better report issues and more importantly track the progress of their inquiries so they know when and who will address it in a timely fashion.