GREEN COVE SPRINGS – While the city council gave City Manager Steve Kennedy an outstanding grade of 4.9 out of 5 in his annual evaluation Tuesday night, Kennedy already was looking ahead to priorities for the new year.

Kennedy outlined seven categories he plans to improve, expand or create, including developing an annexation plan to address downtown and overall city growth.

Kennedy was hired in 2012. The council was asked to grade him in 10 categories with the highest grade for each category being a 5. The council approved his evaluation and the staff recommendations, 5-0.

Other ideas by Kennedy that were approved include:

• Improving electric utility reliability and reputation, including quicker response time for outage calls and continuing to reduce the number of outages.

• Bringing all utility infrastructure to 20% above current capacity.

• Improve community outreach, education and communication by hosting quarterly town hall meetings, continuing the citizen advisory committee and highlighting one of the city’s departments every month.

• Better define city codes, city zones, overlays and adopt a blight tax ordinance.

• Improve fund and reserve balances.

• Exploring opportunities to create a Smart City by making city data more accessible to the public, coordinating participation between private and public sectors and aligning departments to leverage the internet technology infrastructure.

• Create of a two-year budget with more concise planning.

In other business, the council heard the first reading of a plan to change an ordinance that would allow Blue Solutions to sell pools and spas at a store planned for Idlewild Avenue.

The council agreed the amended ordinance was consistent with the city’s Comprehensive Plan because it would “promote public health, safety and welfare of the city.”

Also, the city council decided it would ask the trail project to connect Clay County with Duval and another trail project from Reynolds Park to Spring Park to be added to the North Florida Transportation Improvement Program.

The trails would enhance safe pedestrian and bicycle traffic and improve operational efficiency.

The Green Cove City Council meets on the first and third Tuesday of each month at 7 p.m. at City Hall.