Baytown Strategic Plan

September and October 2021

• Focus groups established
• Community workshops held

November 2021 to March 2022

Strategic Plan Advisory Committee meetings held

April 2022

Strategic Plan Advisory Committee presents Strategic Plan to Baytown City Council

What is Imagine Baytown?

Imagine Baytown was a community-engagement effort to develop a city-wide strategic plan to guide decisions about Baytown's future. This 5-year community-based strategic plan is rooted in a community vision supported through common values, goals, and objectives. The City of Baytown sought out to fully understand the perspectives and priorities of its community members by establishing various focus groups around the City.

What is a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is the most fundamental guide for a community’s future. This plan sets a common direction for the city (a vision) based on the needs expressed by community members. The strategic plan is high-level, broad in nature, and designed to inform more specific policy and decision making in the future. The plan relies on heavy public participation in conversations focused on the future. The Imagine Baytown process was an opportunity for the entire city to pause, take stock, and define what we want Baytown to be and how we intended to get there. Specifically, the strategic plan memorializes the vision, directives, initiatives, and strategies of the city for the next five years.

Why does Baytown need a strategic plan?

Baytown needs a strategic plan to guide the overall vision for the city’s future. Although the city has gone through many other master planning processes for specific projects and initiatives, the strategic plan is the one overarching, community-driven vision.

Who lead the planning process, and who is in charge of executing the plan?

The process was led by the Strategic Planning Advisory Committee (SPAC) made up of residents, business owners, and other stakeholders from across the city who represent diverse interests. The SPAC met regularly throughout the process to plan outreach activities and set the general direction for the strategic plan. The process was managed by the City of Baytown's City Manager's Office in collaboration with Kendig Keast Collaborative. When the plan was completed, the Baytown City Council, adopted the recommendations developed in the strategic plan.

How long will the strategic planning process take?

The strategic planning process was broken into 4 phases, Launch Phase, Data Gathering Phase, Analysis Phase and Composition Phase. The process took around 8 months and be completed was adopted in March 2022.

How is this different from other planning processes?

The City of Baytown has created many master plans in our history, but those plans have addressed specific projects or initiatives, such as the 2040 Comprehensive Plan for Planning & Development, our Parks and Trails Master Plan or Sidewalk Master Plan for examples. The strategic plan sets a common community-based direction designed to assist policy and decision-makers to guide decisions about Baytown's future.