At the end of city leaders’ first strategic planning meeting, a timeline of sticky notes ranging from the Bleeding Kansas era to Rock Chalk Park hung on the wall.

The exercise was one of several during the approximately three-hour strategic planning meeting held Friday, and one Mayor Leslie Soden found particularly helpful in considering the various factors that have shaped the city.

“Right now, I’m just a person in a certain time and a certain place, and so I feel like my impact is quite limited,” Soden said. “I would like it to be larger than what it is, and so it’s important to be able to see the longer impact that people can have on periods of time.”

Soden said that ability is key as local leaders prepare to develop the framework of the city’s first strategic plan, which will lay out what they want the city to look like in the future and specific steps to get there.

City commissioners were joined by more than a dozen other city staff members, including department heads and City Manager Tom Markus. The timeline was broken into three categories — people, events and actions — and by the end of the exercise had dozens of entries.

People included on the timeline included longtime City Manger Buford Watson, Alvamar developer Bob Billings and current Commissioner Mike Amyx, who just completed his sixth term as mayor. Actions included the founding of the University of Kansas, establishment of the local fair housing ordinance, rejection of the “cornfield mall,” westward expansion of the city limits, and the construction of the South Lawrence Trafficway. Defining events included Quantrill’s raid, the flood of 1951 and the social unrest of the 1970s.

Once the timeline was complete, commissioners and staff came up with a phrase to characterize the time periods. Soden said that was another helpful process.

“It’s good to think about this and be able to pick out points in time that we can sort of label,” Soden said. “Obviously, this is not an exact science that we’re doing, but to still be able to label different time periods is helpful so that we can come up with our own label of what we want the future to be.”

That process was more difficult for the most recent period, 2007-2016. The period was eventually dubbed the “decade of dichotomy” after some debate as to whether it should be defined by success or controversy.

Timeline entries for the “decade of dichotomy” included controversial developments: the HERE apartment complex, The Oread hotel and Rock Chalk Park. On other notes were the approval of the infrastructure sales tax, the opening of the South Lawrence Trafficway, and City Manager Tom Markus, who joined city staff 10 months ago.

Soden said the last decade highlighted the need for a strategic plan.

“We can’t figure out how to label the last 10 years; that’s why there’s so much controversy now, because we’re all pulling in different directions,” she said.

The retreat is being headed by The Novak Consulting Group, which the city hired to assist it in creating its first strategic plan. In addition to considering the city’s history, consultants asked commissioners and staff to list global and local trends currently affecting the city. That list encompassed issues such as climate change, political polarization and the effects of the internet.

During the second day of the retreat, commissioners and staff will come up with a framework for the future of the city as well as individual factors necessary to accomplish it. The session is open to the public and will take place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Bioscience and Technology Business Center, 2029 Becker Drive. Once commissioners create a framework, it will be presented to the community for feedback and possible revision at several sessions in the coming months.