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The Pleasanton City Council participated in a special workshop last week where the members told staff to begin assessing a number of projects to prioritize over the next couple of years, including the possible annexation of Castlewood, updating the Downtown Specific Plan and developing a citywide fiber-optic blueprint.
These projects, along with several others the council expressed support for, are just some of the 82 projects listed under the city’s five-year strategic plan’s fiscal year 2025-26 and 2026-27 project prioritization list. These projects range from ones that have already been identified as must do projects, to ones the city is committed on completing, to others that have been deferred for the time being,
The March 17 special council workshop served as a sort of check in with the council to gauge where its priorities lie and to see what projects the council would be willing to support financially moving into the next fiscal year.
“The purpose of tonight … is really to hear from the council about what you want to accomplish and for us to re-triage the list and come back to you with some options and a recommendation,” City Manager Gerry Beaudin said during the meeting. “A lot of folks want a lot of specific things for a variety of different reasons and we’re just trying to take limited resources and put them to the needs that are identified by the City Council.”
Back in 2023, the City Council adopted its ONE Pleasanton five-year citywide strategic plan, which replaced the city’s longstanding two-year priority setting process.
The plan established five strategic goals and 47 strategies to help guide city operations, service delivery and capital investment over a five-year period.
Its five multi-year goals include funding the city’s future through fiscal sustainability, optimizing the organization to ensure the city delivers quality services and programs, investing in the environment through eco-friendly and sustainable facility infrastructure, safeguarding the city through public safety and emergency preparedness, and community development.
Last week’s workshop not only provided an update on the implementation of the strategic plan, but it also introduced the city’s new “Strategic Plan Dashboard”, which serves as the city’s formal quarterly reporting tool where residents can see all the work the city is doing surrounding the strategic plan.
“This workshop marks an important shift from strategy development to structured implementation and accountability,” Sharon Petrehn, principal analyst for the city, told the council.
She added that the purpose of the workshop was to provide a progress update on the strategic plan and council priorities, to confirm the council’s strategic focus as the city approaches fiscal year 2026-27 and to ensure alignment between council priorities, staffing capacity and budget resources.
“This helps to ensure the city remains focused on initiatives that matter most to the community,” she said.
In the first three years of the five-year plan, the council identified seven strategies focusing on policy direction, staffing capacity and fiscal resources. Last week, the council reviewed these strategies and decided to remove the assessment of the city’s overall emergency preparedness, as substantial work in that area is already complete.
According to Petrehn’s presentation, the city completed two functional emergency operations center exercises and “strengthened coordination and response readiness”.
Councilmember Julie Testa also clarified with Beaudin that it doesn’t mean the city will completely abandon emergency preparedness.
“We will continue to focus on emergency preparedness within our organization,” Beaudin said.
The council showed initial support for continuing the other six council priority strategies but added that for the strategy regarding new revenue sources, they want the city to explore any and all new potential sources of funding to address infrastructure needs. Mayor Jack Balch also suggested folding in prioritizing downtown vitality and finding ways to further elevate its economy.
But the main topic during the special workshop was the list of priority projects.
As the city enters the final two years of the strategic plan, staff are looking to advance and begin clearing these various projects, which is why they needed to gather feedback from the council on which ones to prioritize first.
Prior to the council discussion, a number of people spoke during public comments to voice their support for certain projects they would like the city to focus on over the next two years.
Most of the people who spoke were there to support the annexation of the Castlewood-area neighborhoods, which are currently within the county’s boundaries, but others spoke up in support of other projects including allowing new land-uses so that cannabis stores can operate in the city, improving certain trails along the arroyos and investing in more climate action plans.
As a result of the public’s comments and further discussion from the council, the council voiced its support for the city to assess possibly moving forward with the following projects:
Updating the downtown specific plan, looking into urban growth boundary amendments, developing a framework to generate revenue from cellular installations on city-owned properties, investigating new allowable land uses across the city, annexing areas like Castlewood and East Pleasanton, revisiting the Climate Action Plan (CAP) 2.0 Implementation, and developing a city-wide fiber-optic blueprint that “pinpoints current gaps, forecasts future bandwidth demand, and outlines phased build-out options”.
The council also showed support for adding a project that looks at developing policy for residents who want to install sports courts in the backyards, a topic that first came up during a contentious application process where a family built a tennis court in their backyard.
Staff will now take last week’s feedback and develop a summary report incorporating the council’s comments that also affirms their priorities, which will then be used to inform the work planning for the 2026-27 fiscal year.
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