Conserving water among Henderson priorities

Falls under city’s ‘sustainability’ heading

Henderson is including water conservation among its top priorities in its new strategic plan for the next four years.

A city’s strategic plan is a published outline of its priorities that will guide policy decisions. Henderson’s last strategic plan set the city’s priorities from 2019 through 2023.

The latest plan has five core priorities: community safety; a healthy, livable, sustainable city; quality education; economic vitality and high-performing public service.

The priorities are similar to those outlined in the city’s last strategic plan, the only difference being that the 2024 plan includes “healthy” and “sustainable” in one of the core goals.

Assistant City Manager Stephanie Garcia-vause said Henderson was successful in accomplishing its goals from the last plan.

“We don’t let our plans sit on a shelf. Our department heads and priority leads actively work on those plans,” she said.

Henderson chose five city employees as its “priority leads” to make sure each of the strategic plan’s priorities is being met. These staffers, if they are not department heads themselves, work with the heads of departments to ensure that city’s departments are each working toward the Henderson’s stated goals.

That desired sustainability will come in the form of water conservation, according to Garcia-vause.

“Instead of only having a healthy, livable community, we have a healthy, livable and sustainable community, and water consumption is a big part of that,” she said.

Garcia-vause and Mayor Michelle Romero said the city will improve its water conservation through initiatives like evaluating development codes to possibly change landscape standards to limit water use, changing more of the city landscapes to water-saving alternatives and initiatives to educate residents about the importance of water conservation.

Neither Romero nor Garcia-vause mentioned any future sustainability efforts other than water conservation.

Romero highlighted that the city’s efforts to promote health will focus on both physical and mental health. The city plans to open a wellness center for its employees that will offer physical and mental health services. Romero said the center will primarily focus on public safety employees, but be available to all city staff.

But despite the health and sustainability additions, both Romero and Garcia-vause said the city is focusing equally on all five of the plan’s priorities.

“As a full service city, we have to address all of these concerns and priorities in order to deliver on our policy as America’s premier community. We don’t have the luxury to focus on one,” Garcia-vause said.