Cape Coral’s city council decided Monday to go forward with a strategic planning session scheduled for Friday, Dec. 11.
Mayor John Sullivan said he wanted the item on the agenda during Monday’s workshop so he could receive feedback from his fellow council members on when and where they would like the session to be held.
Interim City Manager Carl Schwing said the strategic planning session works around the analysis of SWOT, which stands for the city’s strengths, weaknesses, operations and threats.
“Let me say this about this process, for those of you that have not been in attendance, I will come in and we will do an analysis,” Schwing said, which will outline SWOT. He explained that the findings will be later condensed and grouped together for strategic objectives.
“Strategic planning is what evolves from what is discussed during that day,” Schwing said. “We are talking high levels of concerns.”
Regarding the fact that a new city manager will not be in place before the planning session is held, Schwing said the SWOT discussions will help the council members come up with conclusions on how to hire a city manager and alleviate potential problems for the city.
During Monday’s meeting, Schwing addressed the concerns about how the council will know when its strategic planning is successful.
“I think that comes out of the process,” he explained. “We are going to be looking for more specific goals because staff needs to meet expectations of the council members.”
He also said the city should be able to provide a budget that is responsive to the strategic planning session.
The strategic planning, he explained ,usually takes between four to five hours, but since new council members were appointed to the board it may take longer.
Councilmember Peter Brandt said there are an awful lot of things that need to be planned that are extremely important and the sooner the council comes together to discuss issues the better.
He said that if the strategic planning needs to be discussed for more than one day, he is fine with that also.
“Quite frankly, we should have some of these arguments with the new city manager in place,” he said.
Councilmember Eric Grill said he does not believe it matters one way or another to have a new city manager in place for the strategic planning session.
“I do like the idea of getting it started, I say we move forward,” Councilmember Derrick Donnell said.
The council decided to see what locations are available away from the City Hall chambers for the session. That will be addressed at the next council meeting.