What Do Local Governments Actually Put In Their Strategic Plans?

Most local government strategic plans start the same way: a room full of leaders, a blank whiteboard, and an argument about what terminology to use for “goals.”

It's a surprisingly hard problem.

The words you choose signal priorities, and once a theme makes it onto the top-level plan, it tends to stay for years. Most planning teams don't start from data. They start from memory, from what a neighboring city did, or from what a consultant recommended.

Here at ClearPoint, we analyzed more than 485 local government strategic plans to answer a simple question:

What categories do peer organizations actually use when they structure their plans?

We mapped raw category names — things like "Police," "Parks and Recreation," and "Economic Development" — into eight canonical themes and counted how often each one appears. What came back is one of the most grounded benchmarks available for this question.

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What is a “strategic theme” exactly?

Before getting into the data, it's worth being precise about what we mean by "theme" because the word is often used loosely.

A strategic theme is an overarching priority that guides resource allocation, decision-making, and organizational focus across all functions. Themes are:

• Cross-departmental by design. A theme like "Economic Health" touches planning, finance, parks, and public works. It doesn't belong to any single department.

• Stable over multiple years. Themes shouldn't change every budget cycle. They're the durable frame that connects annual plans to long-term vision.

• Organizers, not describers. A good theme organizes goals, measures, and initiatives underneath it. A bad one just describes what a department already does.

What themes are not: department names, project lists, mission statements, or a comprehensive inventory of everything your organization does.

The most common mistake we see is a plan where every department gets its own theme — which defeats the purpose entirely.

The data on theme count is clear: Most high-performing local government plans land somewhere between five and seven themes.

Too few, and priorities become vague. Too many, and effort gets diffused. This sweet spot gives teams enough specificity to act while maintaining focus on what matters most.

The Data Behind This Analysis

This analysis comes from ClearPoint's 2026 Strategic Planning Report, which draws on 31.2 million data points across more than 20,000 real strategic plans.

For this piece, we filtered to local government organizations and examined the top-level plans: the main strategic plan document at the top of the hierarchy, distinct from department-level or operational scorecards. This layer reflects deliberate choices about what belongs in a community-wide strategy.

Percentages reflect each theme's share of objectives among the top eight themes, so you can see how they rank relative to each other.

The Top Eight Themes: By the Numbers

Top-Level Plans Only — 1,514 objectives across top eight themes

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What Each Theme Actually Covers

Here's what each theme encompasses — and what the data suggests about why it lands where it does.

1. Economic Health

25.9% of top-level objectives | 42 plans

Economic Health is the most objective-heavy theme at the top-level — the clear leader among community-wide strategic plans. Cities and counties consistently treat economic vitality as a central strategic priority, regardless of size.

This theme typically includes objectives around:

• Business retention and attraction
• Workforce development
• Fiscal sustainability and budget health
• Downtown and commercial corridor investment

Its commanding share of top-level objectives signals that economic health isn't just tracked operationally. It's treated as a community-wide strategic anchor.

2. Neighborhood and Community Vitality

15.3% of top-level objectives | 29 plans

This theme encompasses:

• Quality of life and livability
• Housing access and affordability
• Neighborhood investment and revitalization
• Resident engagement and civic participation

It's the broadest of the eight themes and often acts as an umbrella for priorities that don't neatly fit elsewhere. At 15.3% of top-level objectives, it earns a genuine enterprise position — not just a departmental concern. The shift from "we provide these services" to "our community is a place where people thrive" is subtle, but it shows up in how governments label their goals.

3. Culture and Recreation

14.6% of top-level objectives | 26 plans

This theme covers:

• Parks and open space
• Libraries
• Arts and cultural programming
• Leisure and community events

Culture and Recreation's strong showing at 14.6% of top-level objectives reflects something real: Residents often care most about these services.

They're visible, tangible, and tied to daily life in a way that "fiscal sustainability" simply isn't. Including recreation as a top-level strategic theme signals that a community takes quality of life seriously enough to plan for it intentionally — not just track it operationally.

4. Infrastructure

13.1% of top-level objectives | 24 plans

Infrastructure in strategic plans typically covers:

• Roads and transportation networks
• Utilities and water systems
• Stormwater and sewer
• Capital facilities and public buildings

At 13.1% of top-level objectives, Infrastructure holds its own as a community-wide strategic priority. Where it appears in top-level plans, it's usually framed around outcomes — maintaining roads to a standard, ensuring water system reliability, etc. — rather than project lists.

Capital improvement plans belong in operational systems. Strategic plans should capture what those investments are meant to achieve.

5. Safe Community

11.9% of top-level objectives | 25 plans

Safe Community typically includes:

• Police and law enforcement
• Fire and emergency services
• Emergency preparedness and disaster resilience
• Public health and community safety programs

At 11.9% of top-level objectives, Safe Community is a consistent enterprise priority — but one that's increasingly integrated as one community outcome among several rather than the dominant frame for everything the government does.

Safety is essential. At the top-level plan layer, it earns its place alongside economic health, livability, and infrastructure rather than overshadowing them.

6. High-Performing Government

10.6% of top-level objectives | 16 plans

This theme covers:

• Internal operations and service delivery
• Employee development and organizational culture
• Technology and process improvement
• Performance management and accountability

High-Performing Government appears in 16 top-level plans, suggesting that when organizations include it, they genuinely treat it as a strategic priority rather than just an operational tracking category.

The key question: Are the objectives under this theme focused on outcomes residents experience, or internal efficiency metrics that belong in a department scorecard? The answer determines whether it earns its place in a community-facing strategic plan.

7. Environment and Sustainability

6.7% of top-level objectives | 12 plans

Environment and Sustainability themes typically include:

• Climate action and greenhouse gas reduction
• Conservation and natural resource management
• Green infrastructure and environmental quality
• Resilience and long-term sustainability planning

At 6.7% of top-level objectives, Environment and Sustainability sits at the lower end of the top eight. The relatively modest share likely reflects a generational shift still underway: Plans developed several years ago often don't include this theme at all, while newer plans increasingly treat sustainability as a standalone enterprise priority.

8. Transportation and Mobility

1.9% of top-level objectives | 6 plans

Transportation and Mobility typically covers:

• Road maintenance and traffic management
• Public transit and multimodal connectivity
• Pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure
• Regional transportation planning

Of the top eight, Transportation and Mobility is the least common in the top level, appearing in just six plans. This likely reflects how transportation planning works in most jurisdictions: it's deeply technical, heavily regulated, and often managed through separate master plans or regional agencies.

When it does appear in a top-level strategic plan, it's usually framed around outcomes like access and connectivity rather than projects.

What This Means If You're Building a Strategic Plan

Keep these two points in mind as you structure your own plan:

1. There's no universal template, and you shouldn't want one. The eight themes show up consistently but their combination varies by community. A coastal city prioritizing resilience will weigh Environment and Sustainability differently than an inland suburb focused on growth. A mid-size city with an aging downtown will lean harder on Economic Health. The data shows what peers are doing. Your plan should reflect what your community actually needs.
2. Watch out for these common pitfalls:
   
   • Borrowing another city's exact theme language without customization.
   • Using broad terms that sound strategic but don't guide decisions.
   • Treating themes as a branding exercise rather than a planning framework.
   • And above all: giving every department its own theme, which turns a strategic plan into an org chart.

The Real Question Isn't What to Call Your Themes…

It's whether your themes are doing strategic work.

<p style="padding-left: 30px;">➡️ A theme named "High-Performing Government" that contains 40 operational metrics and no strategic objectives isn't a strategic theme &mdash; it's a reporting bucket.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">➡️ A "Safe Community" goal that lists department initiatives without tying them to resident-facing outcomes isn't strategy &mdash; it's an activity log.</p>

The value of this benchmarking data isn't to tell you what to call your goals.

It's to give you a realistic picture of how peer organizations structure their plans so you can make deliberate choices about your own.

Whether you use these eight themes exactly, adapt them, or build something entirely your own — what matters is that your top-level plan reflects your community's actual priorities, can be executed by real people with real accountability, and can be measured with a manageable number of strategic indicators.

That's what separates a strategic plan from a document.

Get the Full Data

This analysis is drawn from ClearPoint's 2026 Strategic Planning Report. It’s the most comprehensive dataset ever assembled on real strategic planning practices, covering 20,582 plans and 31.2 million data points across seven industries.

If you want the full picture — including benchmarks on plan size, ownership, measurement, execution rates, and what separates the top 5% of executing organizations from everyone else — you can access the report here.

Note: All data in this post comes from ClearPoint's 2026 Strategic Planning Report, filtered to Local Government organizations. Percentages reflect each theme's share of objectives among the top eight themes only.

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