Cottonwood Mayor Tim Elinski and City Manager Scotty Douglass provided an update on the city of Cottonwood’s goals during the Mingus Mountain Republican Club meeting on Tuesday, June 13.
Elinksi said that Douglass, who is in his fifth week as city manager, as well as their new city attorney, Jenny Winkler, had both been ambitious to come to Cottonwood and had been waiting for suitable positions to open up.
“We’ve worked very hard as a community to make Cottonwood a desirable place to live,” Elinski said.
Douglass talked about recently looking down at Cottonwood from Mingus Mountain and recognizing that it was a large, established community with work still to be done.
“There’s so much opportunity for us here as a community,” Douglass said. He went on to discuss how he felt his time in the U.S. Navy had served as the foundation for his values, and recalled once asking a captain for advice, to be told that what he needed to focus on was how he could further the mission of the ship, take care of his people and have fun.
Douglass explained that he translated this as communicating clearly with others, giving people what they need, whether resources, mentoring or something else, and meeting the different needs of everybody in order to have fun collectively.
Addressing the perception that many residents see the city’s general plan as concerning land and zoning alone, Douglass argued that it involves culture as well. Because it is a 25-year plan, he noted the importance of transmitting the plan to the next generation.
As for the city’s strategic plan, Douglass compared it to the main mission of the ship. Cottonwood’s strategic plan, like that of the previous city where he worked, Modesto, Calif., claims to emphasize quality of life. As deputy city manager, Douglass spearheaded a blight abatement strategy that formed a committee to discuss such issues in Modesto.
On the issue of housing in Cottonwood, Douglass claimed that the first thing to do is to define the problem and presented a housing continuum chart running from homelessness to being established in a home. He talked about having an unspecified dashboard allowing everyone to see where they are at with their housing strategies.
Elinski updated the public on the status of the Cottonwood Municipal Center building, which will house multiple city offices under one roof. After consolidating its operations at the new facility, the city plans to sell some of its vacated buildings in Old Town so they can be occupied by businesses.
