Mission, Vision And Values

Strategic Plan

View the Strategic Plan fact sheet

Mission

Enhancing your quality of life through exceptional delivery of services and efficient use of public funds. 

Vision

A diverse and vibrant County where residents and businesses thrive.

Goals and Specific Outcomes

Be Fiscally Sustainable

Outcomes:

  • Fund mandated services to meet best practices and required standards
  • Consider strategic use of debt
  • Ensure structurally balanced budgets
  • Strive for efficiencies

Provide Essential and Mandated Services 

Outcomes:

  • Perform as stipulated in statutes and regulations
  • Remain responsive to community interests

Be Community Focused

Outcomes:

  • Promote thriving communities
  • Foster personal safety and security
  • Nurture individual and collective opportunities
  • Provide a healthy natural environment
  • Support opportunities for physical health and mental health

Guiding Principles

Primary criteria/guiding principles:

  • Support economic vibrancy
  • Protect community quality/well-being
  • Consider holistic and long-term financial implications in decision-making processes
  • Be data centric in identifying needs the County can address
  • Hire, develop and retain employees to enhance their growth and opportunities
  • Employees understand their vital role in achieving the success of County outcomes

Additional criteria/guiding principles:

  • Understand and respond to what our community values
  • Preserve our reputation and credibility
  • Develop and preserve a culture of inclusion and connectedness

Values

Accountability 

We demonstrate accountability by:

  • Building trust with community through our decisions and actions
  • Holding ourselves to established clear standards, processes, and procedures
  • Adhering to a high standard of integrity
  • Sharing data and information to demonstrate fiscal responsibility, community responsiveness, and progress on County’s strategic plan

Accessibility 

We demonstrate accessibility by:

  • Providing services in multiple ways
  • Seeking and understanding community interests using a variety of approaches
  • Making it easy to contact and connect with the right elected official and staff members
  • Being timely in responding to community interests
  • Providing facility access to people with differing abilities

Inclusivity

We demonstrate inclusivity by:

  • Engaging community and cultural perspectives in decision-making
  • Striving for cross-county, cross-cultural representation on advisory boards, committees, task forces
  • Demonstrating inclusivity in our recruitment, development, and opportunities for advancement
  • Ensuring a welcoming, safe, and respectful environment by reflecting the diversity of Arapahoe County

Integrity

We demonstrate integrity by:

  • Doing what we say we will
  • Following up, being responsive
  • Sharing both the good and the bad
  • Willing to admit/own when there is a problem
  • Adhering to the County Code of Ethics

Strategic Plan Accomplishments

Guided by the strategic plan, Arapahoe County has been able to:

  • Maintain a structurally balanced budget in a landscape of limited revenue growth and new service and programmatic requirements.
  • Deliver a variety of high-quality services in the most efficient manner possible.
  • Establish a new health department throughout 2022, balancing fiscal sustainability and using residents’ input to protect community well-being.
  • Develop a diversity, equity and inclusion framework and action items to ensure that Arapahoe County remains an accessible environment for residents and employees.
  • Allocate nearly $120 million of American Rescue Plan Act funds to promote a full COVID-19 recovery, including business recovery grants to promote economic vibrancy, supporting organizations that provide physical and mental health services for residents, and investing in critical infrastructure to promote thriving communities.
  • Secure voter approval of permanent, dedicated open spaces funding to preserve natural space and improve parks, trails and recreation facilities.
  • Establish a regional homelessness committee to coordinate response efforts across municipalities within the county.
  • Coordinate and implement a regional opioid council to distribute approximately $25 million of opioid abatement funds to support a community-wide response to the opioid crisis.
  • Update the Arapahoe County Land Development Code to increase housing affordability and position the county to access state affordable housing grants in the future.
  • Leverage one-time funds to address critical medical and operational needs at the detention center, providing more time for the county to secure a voter approved funding solution to address the pressures facing an aging and insufficient detention center.
  • Adopt the 2040 Transportation Master Plan, using extensive public input to determine and plan for the county’s most critical infrastructure improvements.
  • Begin planning for the 18th Judicial District transition and assume sole operation in a fiscally sustainable manner.
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