City Council Members (From L to R) becky Anderson, Mayor Shane McCampbell, Bob Fleming, Tim Scott, and Jim Davidson place dots next to large lists containing the city's priorities on Thursday.
The Burlington City Council prioritized the building of a new police station and improving downtown parking during a Thursday night goal setting session.
Mayor Shane McCampbell and members of the council met for around four hours with Jeff Schott, director of the University of Iowa Institute of Public Affairs. The Council looked at what they’ve been doing right over the past several years and what still needs to be done to improve the city of Burlington.
Laying out a large list of concerns, the council selected two “high priority” concerns to tackle and several “medium priority” concerns. High concerns were building a new police station to replace the aging and deteriorating structure downtown, and improving overall parking in the downtown area to be more conducive to business and land development.
Lower on the priority list, but still selected as priorities, were completing a public safety study to determine the future direction of the police and fire departments, the redevelopment of dilapidated buildings, increasing law enforcement funding, and renovating the long-closed Cascade bridge at Crapo park.
City Councilman Jim Davidson echoed the sentiments of the rest of the council in highlighting the biggest goal the council has achieved in the past several years: working to get the city out of debt and into a better financial situation.
“It’s the most important thing we’ve done in the past three years.” Davidson said, “Nothing else even comes close, in my view.”
Visible economic growth and development was also cited as a major improvement over the past several years. Burlington won the designation of the 17th best micropolitan area in the country, according to site selection magazine.
