One Year in Office: Mayor Has High Hopes for 2012

learned quite a bit about priorities during his first full year as mayor.

When he accepted the post — filling the void left when then-mayor — housing was his .

It still is.

But Summers said he’s got a list of nine objectives he’d like to work on in 2012.

“These objectives define the scope of our planned work,” he said. “From last years' experience, issues will come to us that are not planned as well.”

He laid them out with Lakewood Patch.

Here they are:

Continue to provide core services that meet the needs of all Lakewood citizens

• Support and improve Police, Fire, EMS, Refuse, Streets and other Public Works services.
• Use GIS technology to create focus and alignment of city resources.

Right-size local government following state cuts

• “We’ve got to shrink our government costs,” Summers said. “That’s the one that worrisome and problematic. These others would be easier if we had resources — but we’re not going to have these resources.”
• Reengage “Citi stat-kaizen focus.”
• Leverage normal attrition to reshape our organization.
• Prepare for 2013 Collective Bargaining.
• Continue to explore shared service and collaboration opportunities with our neighbors and other service providers.

Improve ease and speed of customer access to information, answers, concerns and opportunities

• Improve skill with existing technologies.
• Identify and Review and train to address citizens needs.
• Use emerging media to more effectively communicate- externally and internally.
• Develop document management strategies.

Strengthen housing stock

• “In 2011, we had vacancy, foreclosures and abandonment that we could have never imagined,” Summers said. "The urgency of housing is more dramatic today than it would have been in 2005."
• Escalate proactive code enforcement.
• Utilize survey results to create focus and compliance.
• Improve performance of interdepartmental housing intervention team.
• Continue implementation of landlord performance initiatives.
• Provide more resources to the Property Investment initiative to expedite appropriate action.

Strengthen commercial corridors with products and services that support Lakewood citizens

• Attract investments.
• Support current investments.
• Support main street strategies of LakewoodAlive.

Aggressively protect citizens and their property

• Maintain appropriate public safety manpower levels.
• Focus on criminal and property nuisance behavior.
• Leverage technology to improve effectiveness.
• Video surveillance in public spaces.
• Enhance vehicle communication technology and training to support our first responders.
• Identify more creative solutions to automobile speeding behavior.

Engage citizens as active participants in opportunities and threats

• Create an effective coordination of volunteers and citizens in need to support basic needs.
• Shelter, food, day-to-day support.
• Promote and develop healthier and more sustainable community initiatives.
• Continue to develop walkable, community based quality-of-life initiatives.

Address regulatory compliance deadlines imposed by federal agencies

• EPA-Storm water Runoff compliance.
• FCC- Public Safety narrow band radio compliance.

Work with citizens, partners to address changes in healthcare law and marketplace forces

• Create appropriate forums to explain, discuss and create consensus regarding Lakewood Hospital.

The objectives that Summers laid out were part of the budget package that city council approved last month.

“It’s not a plan of action, it’s an embodiment of the work that’s before and puts some boundaries around that work,” he said. “My sense is that you could go back 20 years and some of these would be in there.

“We will be talking all year long on this. These are must-dos. We can make serious headway on all of them.”