A community summit at Calvary Community Church attracted a crowd of Sumner residents intent on strengthening their city.

The Thursday event, sponsored by the Sumner/Bonney Lake Area Communities for Families Coalition with assistance from other organizations including the Sumner School District, featured sessions on topics like safe places for youth to go after school and school funding.

Topics were discussed simultaneously throughout the sprawling church.

While a room on the second floor was filled to capacity with people learning how to keep the community healthy by combating substance abuse, Sumner Mayor Dave Enslow spoke to a group in another room about maintaining city services with limited resources.

The session, titled “Macaroni and Cheese – City Services on a Tight Budget” borrowed its name from a term Enslow used during a council meeting when comparing more robust economic periods as akin to affording steak, and thinner times requiring a diet of macaroni and cheese.

He told the group attending the lecture he takes budgeting the city’s resources seriously.

“I’m really hoping that at the end of the day, we’re more careful than we need to be,” he said.

Enslow said he hoped people attending the summit learned something about the challenges the city faces and how it plans to overcome them.

He said being a close-knit community is important to the city’s success.

“We have partnerships. We’re all connected and we all need each other,” he said.

Enslow said Sumner offers a cooperative working environment, which he thinks is crucial to the city’s health.

“It’s about us being friends and the strength that comes from that.”