Report card mostly favorable on city's goals

At last week's City Council meeting Thousand Oaks City Manager Scott Mitnick presented a 182-page summary of his staff's progress toward achieving the goals and objectives set for them by the council for the fiscal year 2005-06, which ended in June.

"The report overall is out- standing and may be the first time ever where we've been this fo- cused and worked this well to- gether to look at what needs to be done with this kind of depth," said Mitnick.

During the meeting, Coun- cilmember Tom Glancy remarked on the staff's effort.

"I congratulate the city man- ager and staff for putting together a very thorough document," Glancy said. "I think it shows a great deal of accountability."

During a Goal Setting Study Session on July 19, 2005, the City Council approved putting a mis- sion statement, a customer service policy, and a number of goals, objectives, recommendations, standards and priorities in writing to use as a measurement of suc- cess for the city's staff.

According to the report, three of the top 11 priorities have been completed and considerable progress has been made on the remaining eight. City staff expects most of those goals to be met be- fore the end of 2006.

Marked as completed is the development of a plan to increase affordable-housing units, protect mobile home park residents and hold three affordable-housing study sessions. Also on the com- pleted list is a plan to acquire Mount Clef Ridge parcels and an agreement to construct a solar energy project at the city's waste- water treatment facility

In-progress items include an equestrian center project. A man- ager for the center has been hired, but the overall project hasn't been completed, Mitnick said.

Other priorities still being worked on include Thousand Oak Boulevard improvements, a pool at California Lutheran University, improvement in public transpor- tation and the reduction or elimi- nation of general fund subsidies of theater operations. Plans to deal with traffic and noise and to lower speed limits on some streets have not been completed.

The Oaks mall expansion re- view is another top priority, and the planning commission is scheduled to make a decision on that project Oct. 22, Mitnick said.

Of the 10 citywide goals and 467 objectives, 37 are completed, with 52 percent expected to be completed by the end of fiscal year 2007, the report said.

Of 49 Community Budget Task Force recommendations, 42 were completed.

"I think the staff did very, very well," said Mayor Dennis Gillette.