This story is part of Worthington Pulse's coverage of the March 9 City Council meeting. Start with the March 9 meeting recap.
Worthington City Council spent most of its March 9 Committee of the Whole meeting on the draft policy agenda that came out of its all-day retreat on Saturday, Feb. 28. The agenda is the two-year list of what council wants city staff to work on. Members agreed the draft captured the retreat, asked staff to soften one transportation item, and heard City Manager Robyn Stewart say staff has little room to take on more. Stewart said the documents would return for formal approval at the following week's meeting.
What's on the draft
The policy agenda sorts work into two columns. "Do Now" items are under way or should start soon. "Do Next" items wait for capacity, and many of them wait for Worthington Together, the update to the city's comprehensive plan, whose recommendations were expected in the summer.
The draft 2026-2028 policy agenda sorts council's priorities into Do Now and Do Next. Source: City Council agenda packet, March 9, 2026, page 6.
The draft policy agenda in the agenda packet puts these in Do Now, among others:
- Worthington Together and the housing, economic development and sustainability strategies it is expected to recommend
- Research on preserving the city's naturally occurring affordable housing
- Rezoning and marketing the Northeast Area, now branded Forge Fields at Rush Run (see the Forge Fields story)
- Outdoor pool construction and the Wilson Bridge Road and High Street crossing
- E-bike and scooter regulations, parking fixes in Old Worthington, and community waste reduction
- Programs for older adults and the reimagined mental health response
- A Charter Review Commission and joint meetings with the school board
Do Next includes accessory dwelling units and "middle housing," phasing improvements along High Street under the Worthington Mile concept, clearer building design standards, a public art plan, scoping a sustainability action plan, and a rewrite of the zoning code after Worthington Together. The packet also carries a 12-page retreat summary written by the facilitator, Jane Dockery of Systematic Solutions, Inc.
Stewart said the Do Now and Do Next lists in the summary and in the draft agenda were checked against each other. Topics that came up at the retreat but did not make either list are recorded in the summary's background sections.
"A pretty big lift": staff capacity
Council Member Glen Pratt asked whether the Do Now list already fills staff's time or whether more Do Next items could move up. "The do now agenda is a pretty big lift for us", Stewart said. Many of those items carry over from the last two years, and the Worthington Together recommendations will likely add more. "I would not suggest that we have a lot of excess capacity at this moment".
Pratt said he would like to move up one Do Next item, streamlining the business development process, but called himself "a realist" and said he would wait for the comprehensive plan. Stewart said some of that streamlining may come through code changes, such as allowing more administrative approvals or fewer review steps, which Worthington Together is expected to recommend.
Later, Pratt asked staff to say when it is overloaded. "We're probably pretty close and have operated that way for the last two years," Stewart said. "This past policy agenda was very ambitious and the staff has been quite stretched".
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High Street: "convert" becomes "investigate"
The Do Next list included "Convert High Street to be multimodal." The packet notes the obstacles: High Street has many bus stops and narrow stretches, and there is a regional push for protected bike lanes.
Council Member Joy Dong said she did not recall council agreeing to that item at the retreat, and that members were unsure what it meant. Stewart said the question of what High Street should look like is being worked into Worthington Together, and council could keep the item or drop it and let it come back through those recommendations.
Council President Rachael Dorothy wanted to keep it, because street changes take years and transportation studies look 20 years out. "If we don't have it on due next, then we've negated 20 years in the future already", she said. Dong's concern was the word "convert", which she said sounds like the city is ready to start. Dorothy suggested rewording it to investigate multimodal options along High Street, or to study High Street. Dong said that felt like an action item council could take on: "we're not gonna start converting High Street to multimodal in '27". Council Member Maria Ramirez and Council President Pro Tem Rebecca Hermann agreed with keeping it on the list in the new wording.
Ramirez had first raised the item because of COTA's proposed service changes. Stewart said she sees talks with COTA about bus service as a separate track from rebuilding High Street, and that the city is already engaged with COTA. (The COTA update is in the meeting recap.)
Tracking progress
Dong said she went into the retreat without knowing where many projects stood, and asked whether the agenda could show percent complete or which staff team is working on each item. Stewart said staff published quarterly timelines in Gantt-chart form for the past two years and let them lapse at the end of 2025, and could bring them back. Measuring staff capacity itself would be much harder, she said, because the city does not track employees' hours by project. Dong said a revived Gantt chart would be enough. Another council member agreed it would help, especially for someone newer to the role.
How to show it to residents
The longest discussion was about the format. The current one-page "placemat" was Dorothy's idea, borrowed from her time on the McConnell Arts Center board. She said that over 10 years on council she watched retreats produce long wish lists "and then we ended up doing one or two because that things kept on getting forgotten". A single sheet keeps everything in view.
Dong brought a reorganized draft she had made over the weekend. It sorts both columns into the same categories (economic development, infrastructure, housing, environmental sustainability, community-based programs, and boards, commissions and governance) and adds goals and explanations so "an average resident" could see why the city is doing each thing. She said she was "not married to it".
Hermann said the current icons tie each item back to the city's vision plan, which more than 3,000 residents helped shape, and that she relies on that visual link. Council Member Pete Bucher said the vision plan is the city's 20-year plan and items should stay tied to its vision statements. Council Member Amy Lloyd and Pratt said it need not be either-or: the placemat could stay as the quick-reference sheet with Dong's version as the detail behind it. Ramirez agreed that two separate documents might work better than one that tries to do everything.
Stewart said she built the current format to group things visually but is "not a graphic designer", and that it started as an internal tracking sheet before being shared widely. She questioned whether metrics should measure what can move in two years or long-term results, and said Dong's "strategies" row repeats the action items. She asked members to send feedback over the following week and said she would work with Dong on another version. Pratt said council was otherwise comfortable with the priorities as listed, subject to what Worthington Together recommends.
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Adding new items: a quarterly check
Stewart asked whether council wanted to keep the last term's rule for changing the agenda mid-stream: monthly progress updates, plus a quarterly pause to consider new ideas or reorder items. The 2024-26 criteria ask whether a new idea fits the agenda, is time-sensitive, can make an impact within two years, and has staff time behind it. Her example was a water and sewer fee study raised at council the previous week.
Pratt said quarterly "feels right" and monthly would be too often; Lloyd agreed. Bucher asked that the review points be marked on the timeline. Stewart said the next quarterly review, where the fee study could be weighed, would fall around June.
Worthington Together and the August recess
Stewart said Worthington Together's community committee was expected to deliver recommendations in the summer. The plan then goes through the Municipal Planning Commission and council, so adoption could come in the fall. Planning and Building Director Lee Brown agreed.
That raised council's August recess. Lloyd asked whether it is required by the city charter. Stewart said it is not: it is council practice, council can change it, and council can call a special meeting in August if needed. She noted the city's printed annual calendar, which shows no council meetings in August, was going to the printer that week. Hermann said she would like to keep the August break and noted that comprehensive plans have always gone through several rounds of meetings. Lloyd said council could use a special meeting if the timing demands it. No change was made.
A new setup for Committee of the Whole
Following up on the retreat, staff is testing a new setup for the monthly Committee of the Whole: four tables pushed together on the floor in front of the dais, with table microphones, in place of the dais and podium. Stewart said staff was ready to try it the next month. That meeting would include the Good Neighbor Award presentation, and Hermann and Dorothy wanted to keep the podium for honorees. Dong suggested honorees face the audience instead of council. Assistant City Manager David McCorkle said the room could be reset after a short recess. Staff will work through options.
Expectations for working together
Council also reviewed a one-page rewrite of the council expectations document, which sets norms for how members work with one another and with staff. Among other points, the draft says that silence during discussion counts as agreement and that members should say whether they speak for themselves or for council. Council members said it captured the retreat discussion well. Dorothy asked that it refer to every member as a council member.
What's next
Stewart said staff would package the retreat summary, the policy agenda and the expectations document for formal approval on the following week's agenda, after checking with Law Director Tom Lindsey on whether that should be done by legislation or by motion.
This is one of 2 Worthington Pulse stories from the March 9 City Council meeting recap.