Title
2019 Strategic Priorities Discussion
Recommended Action
This item is for discussion only, any potential adoption of priorities is anticipated to occur at a subsequent meeting.
Body
The County has a number of planning documents developed with community, staff, and Councilor input that describe key goals for achieving the community’s vision for the County. While we will continue to work to make progress across many of these goals, discussions with the newly elected Council Chair has identified a desire to provide two additional perspectives to support focusing efforts and informing investment decisions in the coming year: (1) a crosswalk of the high-level goals of these plans - relative to common areas of impact - to help provide an integrated picture of the planning strategies and (2) identification of Council priorities - high priority issues that have been raised by community members - to facilitate making progress on especially urgent or challenging issues. The interface of the crosswalk and priorities with existing documents such as the Strategic Leadership Plan (Attachment A) and the associated Management Action Plans (Attachment B) will also be considered.
Chair Scott has provided the following information in order to outline expectations:
Task #1: Development of a crosswalk of County planning documents. Attachment C is a draft spreadsheet that identifies several high-level planning documents and their recommended tasks/goals. This is intended to provide an integrated view of how our various plans/goals impact key areas we will be discussing during the coming year. This document is not intended to change any County policy; it simply provides a tool for better understanding our current goals as we undertake our business this coming year.
Developing this crosswalk will provide an opportunity for Council, County staff and community members to review key documents and their associated goals. In addition, it will help with team building as county staff, community attendees, as well as the County Councilors in attendance work together to develop the crosswalk by binning the planning document goals in impact categories and then discussing perspectives/what they learned from the exercise. The result will be a DRAFT crosswalk, which can be updated after the meeting as needed and/or useful.
Preparation: To prepare for this activity I’d suggest that we review the attached DRAFT crosswalk document and discuss (a) proposed changes in the impact categories and (b) additional planning documents that could be included. Plans that have had public and Councilor input, and will be relevant to decisions we’ll be making in the coming year will be included in the exercise. Plans written to respond to/address specific goals (e.g. the Environmental Sustainability Plan which describes a set of indicators in support of the 2017 LAC Strategic Leadership Plan Goal to “Enhance environmental quality and sustainability, balancing costs and benefits including County services and utilities.”) will not be included in the discussion.
Task #2) Identification of Council priorities. The goal of this exercise is the identification of a limited number (>0 and <6) of items that are important to the community and that the Council agrees on, will focus on, and work together on to make progress. This does not mean the Council and County staff will only work on these priorities; the identification of these priorities is simply a tool to help assure that in the context of all of the other efforts/ ongoing work a focus on a few high-level, important but challenging goals is maintained.
For each priority, specific actions that will be taken to achieve the stated goal will be identified. (For example only, if housing is an agreed priority then we could list the following associated actions: (1) investing in a housing study to clearly identify needs, (2) reconvening of the property disposition subcommittee to assess county land potentially available and amenable for housing, (3) continuing to pursue legislation supporting the County’s application for capital outlay funding to develop affordable/workforce housing infrastructure, (4) sharing and discussing implications of the housing study with the Department of Public Utilities Board, and (5) monitoring progress towards addressing housing study needs on a monthly basis). The set of DRAFT priorities/actions developed at the meeting will be refined as needed and considered for approval at a future County Council meeting.
Preparation: To prepare for this activity I’d suggest that we come prepared to propose a few priorities (and associated actions) that we would focus on in 2019.
It is understood that as a result of the ongoing GRT issue, there are budget uncertainties and addressing priorities that require funding outlays will need to be contingent on the resolution of this issue.
Alternatives
Council could choose to not consider any alterations to its current priorities in the Strategic Leadership Plan.
Fiscal and Staff Impact
Given that the direction will not be known until this meeting occurs, there are no known fiscal/staff impacts. It is anticipated that this discussion will be used as input to the County's budget preparation activities, however, any decisions regarding the allocation of funds will not occur until our planned budget hearings in April.
Attachments
A - 2018 County Strategic Leadership Plan
B - December 2018 MAPS Update
C - DRAFT Crosswalk of County Planning Documents
D - 2018 Annual Report