Economic development, housing and Vision 2020 are among the Austin City Council’s top priorities this year.

Council members reviewed various goals and long-term plans Wednesday during their council retreat, which ended with a slew of issues to tackle.

“We got the most obvious ones done last year,” Mayor Tom Stiehm said. “Now it’s the ones that aren’t as easy to solve.”

Council members spent the evening discussing hypothetical budget increases, Vision 2020 goals and ways to make the community better.

Among the various ideas for 2015 include attracting more businesses to Austin, getting more council members on Vision 2020 committees, finding ways to increase housing within the community, working with the city’s communities of color and refugee population, creating a citizens watch group and more.

“It kind of showed where different council member’s priorities were,” Council Member Jeff Austin said.

Austin and other elected officials said getting more city participation in Vision 2020 projects was key as many Vision 2020 committees are poised to begin recommending projects in 2015 and 2016.

“We’ve got to be more visionary,” Austin said. “When we set goals we’ve got to look at more than this year.”

In an exercise to see where the council’s priorities lay, council members got the chance to hypothetically increase department budgets.

Many chose to increase the police, parks and recreation, economic development, public works and street budgets.

“It’s good to look at public safety, maintenance, that kind of thing,” Council Member Jeremy Carolan said.

In addition, the city brought in area business expert George Brophy to discuss visionary concepts and risk taking as well as what Vision 2020 could mean to Austin. The council looked at census data and discussed how to bring in more jobs and college-level graduates to the area.

“The more college graduates you have, the higher your median income, the better your housing values become,” Finance Director Tom Dankert said.

City Administrator Craig Clark said the exercise and council goals were a good step to direct city staff on future initiatives for the city. It also helps the council determine how involved the city needs to be in big projects with Vision 2020, as the city could end up maintaining several Vision 2020 projects.

“As the city, we need to answer those questions,” Clark said.

The council will formalize its goals over the next few weeks.

2015 potential council goals:

•Flood wall plaques

•Vision 2020 integration

•Make Craig Clark the point person for the city’s Vision 2020 efforts

•Resolve the city’s e-cigarette moratorium

•Create an economic development package for potential businesses

•Develop housing opportunities

•Make Austin a tourist destination

•Create a Blue Zone/healthy city initiative

•Create a Citizens Watch Group

•Diversity Outreach