Council eyes Mankato's problems, solutions as it prepares new five-year plan

Oct. 31—The Mankato City Council and municipal department heads had their say — eight hours' worth — during a recent Strategic Planning Workshop.

In the weeks and months ahead, city residents will be asked to share their thoughts on what's good about Mankato, what's not and what the priorities should be for the next five years.

"You'll be seeing this stuff out and about town," said planning consultant Sara Singer Wilson. "... So more to come."

The content of "this stuff" was somewhat nebulous after the Mankato City Council Strategic Planning Workshop last week. It's the job of Wilson, her staff at Oregon-based SSW Consulting and a local committee to distill the daylong discussion into themes and questions that will be presented to Mankatoans for input.

That will continue through January with online surveys, interviews with community leaders and a variety of outreach measures targeting people of all demographic groups.

From February through June, a new strategic plan will be developed and approved to serve as a roadmap for the city through 2029.

Council President Mike Laven offered a mix of realism and enthusiasm as the workshop neared its conclusion.

On the practical side, most Mankatoans will remain more interested in nut-and-bolt city services than organizational goal-setting.

"Most of the public is going to be, 'Well, OK. Are you still going to answer my call?'" Laven said.

At the same time, he was excited about the big issues that had been discussed — more housing of all kinds, more affordable housing, tactics for making Mankato attractive to young workers, boosting the number of day care slots, ensuring residents feel safe, building pride in the community, improving methods of communication with all residents and more.

The list went on and on and on.

The upcoming stages of the process will aim to bring focus and prioritization, and the city staff — with budgetary support and oversight from the council — will ultimately be tasked with accomplishing the goals.

"This is going to work because we're going to make sure it works," Laven said.

For skeptics of governmental strategic planning processes, there might be some reassurance from looking at previous plans enacted in the last quarter century by Mankato's municipal leaders.

They have produced changes in the basic appearance of Mankato through downtown redevelopment, design standards for commercial areas and the creation of new riverside parks. They have resulted in repairs and modernization of the guts of the city, ranging from storm sewers to accounting software systems. They've altered how Mankato deals with neighboring cities, recognized the increasing diversity of the citizenry, attempted to better manage the city's sprawl, made municipal operations more energy efficient, and identified needed new facilities ranging from a downtown hotel to sports and recreational facilities.

Newcomers to Mankato might take for granted some of the changes that first showed up as ideas in previous five-year plans: the downtown sculpture walk, the transformation of South Front Street, the extension of Victory Drive north past Madison Avenue, the burying of power lines to improve the appearance of Madison, the spring cleanup service to reduce residential clutter, the creation of RibFest, the redevelopment of an industrial/warehouse area into Sibley Parkway, the various tactics aimed at making the downtown entertainment district safer and less alcohol-focused, and many more.

The most recent plan, approved in 2018, had fewer direct successes due to the pandemic and, to some extent, the transition in leadership that came with the retirement of longtime City Manager Pat Hentges in November 2020.

"COVID got in the way of a lot of it," City Manager Susan Arntz said. "... It interrupted and shifted our focus."

The council — along with Arntz and the directors of the departments of Public Safety, Public Works, Community Development, Administrative Services and Human Resources — started their workshop by focusing on current conditions. Frequent topics included a shortage of housing, workers and day care slots, stressful shifts in the tax burden toward homes and apartments, low-paying jobs coupled with high apartment rents, the tendency of young adults to prefer larger metro areas and the lack of attention to residents of lower socio-economic status.

Although the initial discussion tended toward problems, much of the rest of the workshop was focused on the hope that Mankato could be visionary and innovative in addressing them. Public Safety Director Amy Vokal pointed to the 400 and 500 blocks of South Front Street. Once the heart of the heavy-drinking "Barmuda Triangle," the transformation involved a city-subsidized mixed-use redevelopment project, a reduction in traffic lanes, wider sidewalks with outdoor dining, trees and landscaping, public art, increased surveillance systems, enhanced police presence, education and police engagement with bar owners and employees, and changes to the liquor ordinance.

"We created a feeling of safety, and it became an entirely different environment," Vokal said, suggesting that similar revitalization can occur outside of downtown.

For Council member Jenn Melby-Kelley, the workshop was an encouraging first step even when the focus was on challenges.

"I'm just glad we're going to have hard discussions about a lot of these, and we're thinking about big ideas," Melby-Kelley said.

Arntz applauded the council's active participation while also warning that a big list of big ideas will make patience an ongoing necessity.

"This is going to take time, energy, resources, communication, prioritization," she said.