LOGAN – The City of Logan has adopted a new strategic mission statement to serve as a foundation for municipal operations, long-term planning and community engagement in the future.
The mission statement is one of the products of a two-day retreat for the mayor and members of the Municipal Council held Jan. 15 and 16 at Utah State University.
“At our retreat,” explained Mayor Mark Anderson, “we worked hard on this mission statement, which we thought would be very helpful for the city going forward.”
The statement reads: “Logan City improves the quality of life for the community by providing essential services that promote safety, well-being and long-term sustainability and preserves the city’s distinctive character through respectful, equitable and transparent government.”
The council members unanimously voted to adopt that mission statement at their regular meeting on Feb. 17.
Anderson believes that the concise mission statement was one of the most important developments to emerge from the two-day retreat in January.
The single sentence summation of the city’s mission is something of a departure from a similar statement in the Logan 2045 General Plan.
The Logan 2045 General Plan is a long-range blueprint for the city’s development from 2025 to 2045, guiding decisions on land use, housing and transportation. It will serve as a foundation for future growth and includes an action plan to meet goals for community design, infrastructure, natural environment and preservation.
“(The general plan) gives us a full-page mission statement that’s hard to remember,” according to Anderson. “So we tried to boil down to a single sentence the highlighted the qualities and values we discussed in our retreat.”
City development director Russ Holley confirmed that the shorter mission statement will be incorporated into the Logan 2024 General Plan.
In addition to guiding all city employees and departments, Anderson hopes that the brief mission statement will inspire city residents as well.
The mayor emphasized that the mission statement will be particularly useful to city staff and council members.
“Now,” he says “when something come to us as a city, we can say: ‘Does this fit with our mission or not?’.”