Strategic Plan Update

At a glance

Based on auto-generated captions; names and details may be misheard. No formal decisions were made.

• What: the council's annual strategic plan review, held during a special retreat meeting on 2026-10-08. The plan, adopted in August 2025, has three pillars (housing, infrastructure, economic development), each with strategies and key performance indicators (KPIs). Councilors voted on each strategy with colored dots (green keep, yellow amend, red remove) and then discussed the results with staff.
• Where it stands: the clear message was to tighten the plan: merge overlapping strategies, drop completed or purely operational ones, and treat the KPIs as a management tool for the city manager rather than council business. Manager Curry will return with a revised draft that also ties each strategy to a council lever (policy, budget authority, or direction to staff).
• Next: the revised draft for council review and eventual adoption, plus a proposed fourth pillar (see Community Safety Priority Area). No date was given.

How the review worked

• Staff supplied an October 2026 progress update (green achieved, yellow underway, red not started or blocked). Councilors placed dots on printed sheets while eating dinner, then the manager summarized results pillar by pillar.
• Several councilors said the plan reads like a three-to-five-year plan written as a one-year plan, and that many items are tactical.
• Staff said removing an item from the plan does not mean the work stops; ongoing work can continue without being a council priority.

Housing

• Most-discussed items: eliminating municipal fees for housing construction (red and green dots canceled out; the Housing Committee had been told to keep gathering information and come back, so it stays), and the vacant building tax (keep, but reword from "tax" to "policy" so the outcome is not prejudged).
• Marked done and likely removed: streamline and shorten the housing approval process (applications are moving through the Development Review Board quickly) and reinvigorate the Housing Committee.
• Zoning reform and zoning bylaw amendments are already underway through the planning work (see Zoning Map Revisions and Tier 1A Status Application); councilors agreed to collapse several overlapping zoning strategies into one.
• The campaign promoting Montpelier-built housing was set aside for now; councilors felt other pieces (Tier 1A status, the city plan, zoning changes, tax stabilization) must come first.
• Housing needs assessment: councilors said the city has housing targets but not a housing vision. The item was kept and may move to the goal on maintaining a mix of housing types.
• Short-term rental registry: staff said there are about 68 short-term rentals and the problem is small; a tracking service would cost money. Councilors split between dropping it and reframing it as monitoring the number and impact of short-term rentals. Staff will give a presentation later with the Housing Committee.
• The two housing trust fund strategies will be merged. A councilor noted nobody has applied to the fund so far; the question of why, and whether to add money, goes to budget time.
• The city-owned Main Street property (number garbled in the captions): its strategy has stalled because a draft request for proposals was not released for lack of staff capacity to negotiate. A councilor suggested partnering with the regional development corporation to run the process.

Infrastructure

• Councilors liked that most infrastructure indicators were green. Staff said sidewalks and roads are near steady-state funding this year, but stormwater, bridges, lighting, traffic systems and buildings are not, and sewer and stormwater will need steady-state plans too.
• Direction: merge the water and paving steady-state strategies into a holistic steady-state planning strategy for all systems, and keep the stormwater utility strategy (with the CHIP item reworded to be actionable).
• Communications strategies repeated under each pillar will be dropped or consolidated; councilors said public works communication has improved considerably.

Economic development

• The child care action plan and child care task force strategies are marked completed; one councilor wanted to keep expanding the city's own child care offerings, while another asked whether a city-run system is the right role for the municipality.
• Biggest debate: the strategy to develop a new economic development plan. Staff said the outdoor recreation ("all-around adventure") work is a small piece already well formed, and that new opportunities are consuming staff time. Councilors wanted a clearly stated economic development strategy (possibly a short action plan developed with the regional development corporation, whose new executive director was praised) rather than a long planning process. Staff will bring more clarity.
• Keep: tax stabilization, the welcome center (one is enough), a revolving loan fund for downtown access to capital (the flood-mitigation and general loan strategies merged), and a study of the business equipment tax. Staff said that tax brings in about half a million dollars in total but only about $25,000 from smaller businesses, and floated replacing it for small businesses with an empty storefront approach.
• Dropped: the business concierge service, the marketing strategy and the upper-story vacancy inventory (covered by the Housing Committee's vacant building policy work).

Minutes record (2026-10-08)

• Items 2026-381: the Council reviewed retreat goals, agreed ground rules and reviewed the housing, infrastructure and economic development priority areas (three to eight goals each, with KPIs). Changes will return for final Council action at a later meeting. By unanimous consent councilors directed Deputy City Clerk Sara McMillon to include Council ideas in the minutes. Council stood at ease 6:00 to 6:44 PM for the sticker exercise and dinner.
• Specific ideas are listed on the meeting page; examples: remove Strategy 1.1.11 as accomplished, consolidate the zoning strategies, drop KPIs from the plan, direct the City Manager to present an end-of-year KPI report, consolidate Water Fund strategies, analyze a higher business equipment tax threshold, drop completed child care strategies. No votes were taken.

Sources

• Minutes: https://www.montpelier-vt.org/Archive.aspx?AMID=93

• 2026-10-08 - City Council (special)

Discussion time

About 97 minutes across 1 meeting (from transcript timestamps; approximate).

Log

• 2026-10-08 - City Council (special) — Retreat review of the three-pillar plan by dot exercise and discussion; consensus to tighten and merge strategies, treat KPIs as management tools, and return with a revised draft.

2026-11-12 - City Council

• Discussion item 2026-417, strategic plan continued discussion.