A unanimous vote by City Council members Monday will allow City Manager Anne Marie Gaura and Project Coordinator Patty Hoppenstedt to begin fully adopting their 10-year strategic plan, Guara said.

The 10-year strategic plan has already begun to be implemented, however, to be thorough with the adoption, the strategic plan is aimed to be put into full effect in fiscal year 2017, Guara said. 

The reasoning behind choosing FY2017 to begin full implementation is because in the second half of FY2016 Dekalb will purchase software to enable project developers and community members to keep track of strategic planning process, Guara said.

“As staff [this] will help us monitor and manage implementation of the plan,” Guara said. “Each of these action plans that are included in the plan will be assigned a specific department [and] will be assigned a specific project coordinator. By having this software we will be able to track it, [city council] will be able to monitor it [and] the community will be able to monitor it. We will still move forward on implementing many of these items in the strategic plan, but as formal tying it into the document because of that technology and software our recommendation will be to officially tie it into FY2017 process.”