LEWISTON — It’s time for the city to resurrect a draft strategic plan that’s been forgotten for the last 15 months, according to city staffers.

City Administrator Ed Barrett asked city councilors Tuesday to reopen the plan, shelved last summer after his predecessor was fired.

“A lot of work and a lot of staff time went into writing this and getting it to this point,” Barrett said. “There are still parts of it that could be very useful.”

City staff hosted a series of meetings with community members beginning in December 2008 designed to identify potential problems as well as the city’s strengths. They wrote a draft of the plan and released it to the public and the city council in March 2009.

The 39-page plan identified challenges citizens and city officials will have to deal with, and some unique opportunities. It also called out goals in seven areas: innovative service delivery, neighborhood identity, safety, riverfront development, economic growth, sustainability, and civic engagement and collaboration.

The draft plan is available online at the city’s Web site.

Councilors were scheduled to begin reviewing and adapting the plan in the summer of 2009. Councilors fired City Administrator Jim Bennett in July. The plan has been shelved since then, as councilors looked for Bennett’s replacement. A new set of councilors took over most of those seats in January 2010. They’ve been occupied with the city’s budget since then.

Library Director Rick Speer, the chairman of the steering committee for the strategic plan, is worth finishing.

“It is still very valid,” he said. “If you remember, we did three family meetings and meetings with 25 groups representing various segments of the city. We put a ton of good ideas down on paper and it would be a shame to let them go to waste.”

Speer said the city has completed some of the suggestions since the draft was written, including beginning work on the Lincoln Street Parking Garage, pursuing a shared software suite with the City of Auburn and completing a study of city fire stations.

“But I’d guess that 10 percent of the good ideas from that study have been addressed,” Speer said. “There is still a lot of good in there.”

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