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.