TRAVERSE CITY — Traverse City commissioners unanimously approved an ambitious multi-year work plan Monday that touches nearly every corner of city government, from road reconstruction, childcare, waterfront protection, tourism management, and more, while committing to a structured accountability process to track progress throughout the year.
City Manager Benjamin Marentette framed the Objectives and Key Results Work Plan as the mechanism to move the city’s Strategic Action Plan off the shelf and into practice. Built around six pillars — corridors and land use, community gathering spaces, regional collaboration, housing and childcare, environmental sustainability, and tourism — the document stretches more than 100 pages and emerged from a department-wide survey that produced roughly 1,500 data points.
Marentette will return to the commission quarterly with progress updates, beginning in June. He described the cadence as essential to keeping strategic priorities visible and the organization accountable.
Colleen Paveglio, elevated by Marentette to a newly created role as director of communications and strategic initiatives, coordinated the survey effort, approximately 94 questions sent to every city department, and presented highlights to commissioners Monday night.
Her department will maintain internal tracking tools, oversee public-facing dashboards, and coordinate implementation across city divisions.
“We are actively moving this plan to implementation,” Paveglio told commissioners. “And we are doing it together.”
Near-term priorities include standing up a Complete Streets advisory committee, launching a zoning ordinance rewrite, re-establishing a summer camp at Hickory Hills and finishing several downtown projects, including the Farmers Market Pavilion and Rotary Square.
The city also recently received a $100,000 placemaking grant for a project at Garfield and East Eighth, with a public engagement process to follow.
Longer-range proposals carry significant scale. A potential waterfront land acquisition near M-72 and M-22 is estimated at more than $4 million.
West Bay shoreline stabilization and an exploration of industrial symbiosis — in which businesses exchange waste streams and resources to reduce costs and environmental impact also appear in the plan.
Marentette said he has already held preliminary conversations in Washington on the industrial symbiosis concept.
Full reconstruction of Seventh and Fourteenth streets under a Complete Streets model is listed as a post-2030 goal, contingent on utility replacement timelines and a multi-year sequencing strategy tied to the city’s capital improvement planning.
The discussion surfaced a question commissioners will need to work through in the coming months: how individual members transmit priorities to staff in a way that is both useful and transparent to the public. Several pressed Marentette on the mechanics of that process.
Marentette told commissioners to route input directly to him in writing, saying he would surface common themes at future meetings. That guidance, he said, will inform the budget proposal he is expected to deliver in May.
A public dashboard to track project progress is targeted for the third quarter of 2026. The work plan is designed as a living document, responsive to commission direction, emerging opportunities, and the pace of implementation across all six strategic pillars.