Samuel D. Bach-Hanson

The Altoona Place Plan outlines a unified public space strategy for the City of Altoona, providing strategic direction for the development and management of parks, open spaces, recreational facilities, programs, and bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. The plan emphasizes a holistic approach to community well-being and quality of life, aiming to create high-quality, multi-functional, actively used, well-maintained, accessible, and welcoming public spaces. Key strategic pillars include integrating public spaces with land use, promoting active and healthy lifestyles, ensuring safety, equity, and efficiency, pursuing design excellence, fostering vibrant social life, achieving financial and environmental sustainability, and maintaining inclusive and transparent processes. The plan also focuses on preserving natural and cultural resources, enabling convenient and safe pedestrian and bicycle travel, optimizing public space management, integrating food production, enhancing urban forestry, and featuring public art.

The Altoona Housing Action Plan aims to enhance community vitality by focusing on housing as a core element. It is structured around five functional areas: Development Regulations, City Policies, Public Funding, Public-Private Partnerships, and Civic engagement. The plan seeks to improve housing affordability, accessibility, and quality within the city, ensuring fair and equitable access to safe, healthy, and stable housing options for all residents.

The strategic planning session focused on aligning the city's goals with new developments and opportunities since 2021, adapting to economic, technological, and societal dynamics, including addressing the housing crisis and leveraging new federal funding opportunities. Key discussion topics included integrating new priorities such as artificial intelligence (AI) and technology to improve city services and efficiency, addressing the growing housing crisis with innovative policies and community engagement strategies, and leveraging new grant opportunities. The session reviewed the 2021 strategic planning SWOT analysis, the city's mission, values, and vision, and defined the top strategic priorities for the City of Altoona.

The 2025 City of Altoona Work Plan is guided by the city's strategic planning efforts and identified priorities. The plan focuses on hiring additional personnel, repairing aging infrastructure, ensuring financial stability, identifying economic growth opportunities, and implementing a space needs program for city facilities. It also emphasizes staff development, quality-of-life amenities, affordable housing, technological needs, public outreach, long-range planning, sustainability, equity, diversity, inclusion, forestry, cooperation with other agencies, park activation, policy changes, cybersecurity, workplace safety, grant procurement, AI integration, and East Neighborhood development.