Happy New Year, Tigard! I hope you and your loved ones had a joyous, safe, and healthy holiday season.
As we welcome the new year, I find myself reflecting on the last year. In early 2023, Council and I met to create our goals based on what we heard from you – our community priorities. This leads our work for the next two years and essentially serves as our roadmap. These priorities include reducing homelessness, addressing climate change, modernizing and improving city services, and enhancing community safety and accessibility.
We’ve made huge strides in advancing Tigard. We’ve talked about the importance of enhancing public safety by renewing our investments through the Public Safety Renewal Levy. We heard from you that improving community safety must be a top priority. That’s why we have a plan in 2024 to place the Public Safety Renewal Levy on your May 2024 ballot.
When it comes to modernizing Tigard’s government, one key step we can take is to make our city government more accountable, accessible to the public, and efficient by updating our City’s Charter with our Smarter Charter. Our Charter lays out the organization, powers, functions, and procedures of the city government. It hasn’t been updated since it was first adopted in 1962, and it doesn’t meet the needs of today’s Tigard. We are planning to ask you to approve these updates on the May 2024 ballot.
You can learn more about these two ballot measures on the Tigard website – www.tigard-or.gov/your-government/may-election-2024.
Later this month, Council and I will meet again to revisit our goals halfway through our two-year plan to celebrate our progress and talk about the ongoing work needed to continue meeting our community’s priorities.
In the coming days, weeks, and months, you’ll hear more about what we are working on.
You’ll hear more about our climate work, we’ll be hosting ongoing conversations to inspire everyday climate actions, build community, and help others to engage.
We’ll share how we are embracing and investing in technology to improve city services by making systems more accessible and easier to interact with the city. We want to make it easier for you – this includes changes like having the ability to pay your utilities online.
And we are continuing to explore ways to address our facilities needs. This has been a serious issue for years, decades even, and we are hoping that 2024 is the year when we have solutions – a path forward to address our needs and keep moving Tigard forward.
2024 is here, there’s no doubt it’s going to be a big year of progress for our community. I am honored to represent you and look forward to working with you.
You can always reach me at 971-435-0964 or heidil@tigard-or.gov, or you can connect to the whole City Council at CouncilMail@tigard-or.gov.
