Strategic Plan Progress and Initiatives for 2025

Our City, Our Future, the City’s 10-year strategic plan, enters its seventh year in 2025.

This plan includes four strategic directions and 12 goals which are reviewed with each term of Council. Annually, staff identify initiatives that advance the goals and directions, considering such things as the results of the biennial Resident Satisfaction Survey, employee engagement survey results, existing plans and strategies and emerging priorities.

Throughout the year, the City provides updates to Council and the public on the progress made towards these goals.

On February 18, a report was presented to Council at Committee of the Whole outlining progress made in 2024, as well as the draft plan for 2025.

Read the Report 

Overall Plan Progress

All strategic directions are tracking at more than 80% completion rate. That said, these numbers change as new initiatives are added annually. A public dashboard shows real time progress on the plan’s strategic directions, goals, and the annual initiatives.

New Initiatives for 2025

This year, the City plans to start 37 new initiatives, bringing the total number of initiatives in the plan to 305. While these initiatives begin this year, some projects may have multiple phases and take several years to complete.

A few new projects of note for 2025 include:

• Adaptation and resilience improvements for City Buildings,
• Replace the Quidi Vidi Slipway,
• Develop a low carbon fleet and supporting infrastructure master plan,
• Several improvements to user experience with Metrobus: introduce Visa and Mastercard tap options, summer and fall schedule improvements, increase the number of wheelchair accessible routes,
• Design and construct two new accessible washrooms: Chafe’s Lane and Conway Glen,
• Refresh or develop a new Youth Engagement Strategy,
• Internal initiatives to advance information management strategies, safety and wellness and organizational performance,
• Create a housing action fund policy, and
• Explore opportunities to have pre-approved house plans for contractors to decrease processing times.

2024 Progress

In 2024, 33 initiatives were completed, bringing the total number of initiatives completed to 188.

Since the last update to council in October 2024, 16 initiatives have been completed. Some of the notable accomplishments include:

• The completion of the new Recreation Master Plan.
• Advantage St. John's is now fully operational as a Regional Economic Development Agency. The organization is fully staffed, and the Board of Directors is in place.
• Marketing and support strategies were deployed to support economic development, including a business information session with Metro Business Opportunities and a Young Voices in Business event.  
• Completion of 2024 action items for the Resilient St. John’s Climate Plan – Community and Corporate Actions, which include initiatives to support the electrification of Metrobus, energy efficiency initiatives for city buildings, expansion of the EV charger network and initiatives to improve disaster resilience and emergency preparedness.
•  Implementation of a new interactive pay station and paid parking map on the City website.

• Completed 2024 crosswalk safety improvement program initiatives, which resulted in the improvement of 12 crosswalks. Improvements include accessible curb ramps, curb extensions, rapid-flashing beacons, signage and or sightline improvements.
• Completed six Youth Engagement Working Group outreach events, exceeding the goal of three to five events. Staff coordinated multiple pop-up events at the Downtown Pedestrian Mall, hosted an event at Memorial University, and organized a Young Voices in Business gathering.

A full list of accomplishments can be found in the report.

Update on Continuous Improvement

Since the last report, the City completed five continuous improvement projects: 

• Streamlined the insurance certificate process for special events,
• Reorganized Roads and Traffic network drive using 5S tool,
• Reviewed and streamlined low value purchase order process,
• Implemented standardized job indexing in Surveying division, and
• Dewatering of water and sewer excavations.

Continuous improvement projects aim to reduce waste in processes (activities that do not add value from a customer perspective), thereby improving lead time, turn-around time, saving hard costs and ultimately improving employee engagement and customer experience. 

A cumulative report of progress from continuous improvements projects is also included in the snapshot which shows ongoing savings of process time, staff time and dollar value reinvested because of these improvements. In 2024, continuous improvement projects saved over 144,493 hours of processing time and helped improve capacity for employees by reinvesting over 9,525 hours of staff time. 

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