Last week, Issaquah Mayor Fred Butler stood before local business leaders to, for the second time of his career as city executive, give his forecast for the year ahead.

“I remember being here a year ago in front of all of you, giving my (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis — with one week as mayor,” Butler said, making a face playfully mimicking anxiety. “A lot has happened in a year.

“Every day our community is evolving … To keep up with these changes, our government has evolved also.”

Members of the Issaquah Chamber of Commerce convened at the Holiday Inn Jan. 8 for the organization’s annual Preview Luncheon. In addition to providing a look at upcoming networking events and business education programs, the Luncheon is an opportunity for the private sector to listen to their public sector counterparts in city government and schools highlight accomplishments from the year past and make forecasts for the year ahead.

For the municipal government’s part, Butler said the city had made strides in permitting processes — noting that the land use permitting process had been cut from 160 to 80 days — the promotion of tourism and fiscal strength, while keeping its eye on obstacles such as traffic, homelessness, substance abuse and mental illness.

In tourism, Butler pointed to the communication department’s November launch of the “Legendary Issaquah” campaign, a series of three TV spots featuring Sasquatch, shot at city locales and during entertainment events like Salmon Days over the course of summer and early fall. The videos had reached 650,000 people in the western United States and Canada, he said.

Indeed, as of Jan. 13 and nearly two months after their initial release, the “Legendary Issaquah” spots had become the second, third and fourth most viewed videos — behind a 2013 mock DUI spot produced at Issaquah High School — on the City of Issaquah YouTube channel, with more than 50,000 views combined. Perhaps small potatoes in the wide world of Internet virality, but a major coup for a channel that typically sees views in the hundreds.

In 2015, Butler said the city would work to preserve Olde Town, recruit new businesses, explore housing options for the Central Issaquah Plan area and continue the financial practices that earned a Standard & Poor’s AAA bond rating in May.

“During this evolution, one thing that has remained unchanged is our service excellence,” Butler said.

Speaking for the Issaquah School District, Superintendent Ron Thiele emphasized the value of schools to the economic prosperity of their service areas. Public schools attract businesses, families and maintain property values, he said. He also boasted of the area’s “highest PTSA membership in the state.”

In 2014, the district completed three collective bargaining agreements, had seen success with elementary literacy programs, rolled out computerized evaluations systems for teachers and administrators and installed a generator at district offices to ensure continued operations during blackouts — a problem that repeatedly plagued the city during windstorms over the course of the year.

Looking toward 2015, Thiele said serious planning had begun on the alternative school that will replace Tiger Mountain Community High School and that training continued to familiarize teachers with federal Common Core standards.

Acknowledging popular criticism of the Common Core, Thiele said he had faith that Issaquah students could rise to the new expectations.

“We’ve been through this before: We saw it in the early ‘90s, with education reform,” he said, referring to the 1994 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act under the Clinton administration.

Addressing the written threats found at Pacific Cascade Middle School three days before winter break, Thiele said life at the campus was returning to normal and that campuses would see updated access protocols, including key cards, electronic locks and video surveillance.

“I absolutely believe our schools are safe and we have years of … data confirming that,” Thiele said. “Schools and school buses are still among the safest places to be.”

The true challenge facing the district in the future, Thiele said, is the potential for the rapid growth of the student population to outpace construction of new facilities. Approximately 550 additional students enrolled in district schools in the past year and the district projects up to 2,000 new students over the next five.

Complicating matters is the passage of voter Initiative 1351 in the 2014 general election. The initiative — which requires full funding for the measure by 2017 but identifies no funding source — mandates limited class sizes at all grade levels. Implementation will force the district to scramble for more classrooms and more teachers — to the tune of 100 classrooms beyond the scope of current construction projects, Thiele said.

Regardless, the superintendent added that “Our future as a school system and community is very bright.”