Second of two parts. 

Re: “Mayor’s Notion of Idol Worship” 

Forty-eight hours on, Mayor Jim Clarke rates the City Council’s historic Strategic Planning Retreat an A-plus.

“We were able to spend the day together discussing issues, and we really had good exchanges,” the mayor said.

“At the end of the day we were able to come up with five long-term, action-oriented things that we are going to be working on.”

The Council members formulated a road map, a working plan for the fairly immediate future – five years.

“At least we have an idea,” Mr. Clarke said, of where the Council is pointing and how it will travel the distance.

“The consultants took a description of each of the five. At a point, they will be sending the full information to us and to the city staff in a form that can be presented to the City Council.”

Each Council member took responsibility for one of the projects and for one of the five discussion topics for separate community meetings.

“We don’t have a clear action plan yet for the community discussion topics,” Mr. Clarke said. “We know they are issues of interest to the community and of interest to us.”

Those community meetings will be held between now and 2018.