On Monday night, city council was provided with an update of the city’s strategic plan. 

In June of 2018, city council and the city’s strategic planning committee held a planning session with Doug Griffiths, author of 13 Ways to Kill Your Community. 

At that session, the city decided to move away from traditional visions and mission statements in order to set itself apart. 

“Most communities are wonderful places and a great place to raise your kids and all that type of stuff and we absolutely are bar none,” said city manager Jim Puffalt.  

“But we want to stand above the crowd and be somewhat unique. So, we came away from that and talked about telling our story and so that's what we've been doing.” 

The city continued to meet with Griffiths and a second session took place in November of 2019 and a third session was held on March 3 of this year. 

The new initiatives that came out of the last meeting included a climate change plan and a downtown enhancement plan to highlight its heritage and history. 

There is an initiative to market the city with the recommendation to hire a marketing firm or person to market the city as well as an initiative to take action with more videos and work with analytics to get more positive pictures of Moose Jaw pop up on online searches. 

The city will also look to create offices and meeting spaces downtown that can be rented out by the day, week, month or year. 

Finally, the city is also looking to develop a list of companies that would fit into the agri-food industrial park and proactively pursue those companies to consider Moose Jaw. 

Councillor Crystal Froese said she likes the direction that the plan is taking. 

“One of the things about this strategic plan that I think is really important to point out is that it is not a dusty document that sits on the shelf. Our strategic initiatives that we have come forward with are all based on action items and to me when it's an action item, it's measurable.” 

Mayor Fraser Tolmie added that it was a good idea to bring the strategic plan back in front of a new city council. 

“One of the questions that we kind of asked ourselves at the time is do we want to have Mr. Griffiths come back and yes, the answer was yes because we wanted our new councillors from the outside to say, do we agree with this or is there changes or is there tweaks? But not only that, but we had new members of administration, and the collaborative effort that we have,” Tolmie said.