[box typ=”normal”]The story below is from the City’s of Mountlake Terrace’s newsletter called City Happenings. We will be highlighting some of the stories this week. To read the entire newsletter, view the PDF at CityofMLT.com.[/box]On March 5, the City Council held its annual retreat at Interim City Hall to review their goals and upcoming work plan. Discussion focused on implementation of Council goals including protecting the city’s finances, economic development, capital infrastructure needs, community outreach, and ensuring the delivery of essential and efficient public services.

The City Council discussed specific efforts to continue progress on economic development and capital infrastructure, particularly streets, sidewalks, utilities, parks, recreation, and public facilities such as the Civic Campus proposal. They also reviewed strategies to ensure the city’s financial stability while maintaining services, given current economic conditions.

Economic development is a major priority for the Council, as it reaffirmed direction to create a new economic development office to help existing businesses expand and create opportunities for new investment. Economic development will help generate new tax revenue to ease the burden on our residents and attract new businesses to our core areas to provide jobs and services for our community.

The City Council identified infrastructure improvements as a key to economic vitality, specifically the reconstruction of 56th Avenue be twe en 230t h and 236t h to encourage and support existing and new redevelopment and revitalization in the downtown.

Capital improvement needs was a discussion item with Council’s continued focus on leveraging additional resources and learning more about other financing options. Those resources include state and federal partnerships and seeking out grant opportunities. The Council also desires to keep making progress during this very favorable bidding environment.

One of the key components of the retreat was a review of options to reduce the scope and size of the Civic Campus proposal that was presented to voters last November. The Council agreed that they need to monitor the economy, keep the community informed about changes to the proposal, and not go back to voters this year.

The City Council supports expanding the city’s communication and outreach efforts by moving into social media to include Facebook and Twitter as additional ways to reach the community and promote transparency. They discussed ideas to continue community partnerships and recognition, such as the Evergreen Awards Program and creation of a Mountlake Terrace Hall of Fame for residents who have gone on to achieve professional prominence