Vision Statement
Kirkland is an attractive, vibrant, and inviting place to live, work and visit. Our lakefront community is a destination for residents, employees and visitors. Kirkland is a community with a small-town feel, retaining its sense of history, while adjusting gracefully to changes in the twenty-first century.
City Council Goals (PDF - 134k)
(updated November, 2011)
The purpose of the City Council Goals is to articulate key policy and service priorities for Kirkland. Council goals guide the allocation of resources through the budget and capital improvement program to assure that organizational work plans and projects are developed that incrementally move the community towards the stated goals. Council goals are long term in nature. The City’s ability to make progress towards their achievement is based on the availability of resources at any given time. Implicit in the allocation of resources is the need to balance levels of taxation and community impacts with service demands and the achievement of goals.
In addition to the Council goal statements, there are operational values that guide how the City organization works toward goal achievement:
Regional Partnerships – Kirkland encourages and participates in regional approaches to service delivery to the extent that a regional model produces efficiencies and cost savings, improves customer service and furthers Kirkland’s interests beyond our boundaries.
Efficiency – Kirkland is committed to providing public services in the most efficient manner possible and maximizing the public’s return on their investment. We believe that a culture of continuous improvement is fundamental to our responsibility as good stewards of public funds.
Accountability – The City of Kirkland is accountable to the community for the achievement of goals. To that end, meaningful performance measures will be developed for each goal area to track our progress toward the stated goals. Performance measures will be both quantitative and qualitative with a focus on outcomes. The City will continue to conduct a statistically valid citizen survey every two years to gather qualitative data about the citizen’s level of satisfaction. An annual Performance Measure Report will be prepared for the public to report on our progress.
Community – The City of Kirkland is one community composed of multiple neighborhoods. Achievement of Council goals will be respectful of neighborhood identity while supporting the needs and values of the community as a whole.
The City Council Goals are dynamic. They should be reviewed on an annual basis and updated or amended as needed to reflect citizen input as well as changes in the external environment and community demographics.