[dropcap]A vibrant, inclusive, healthy community which inspires innovation and growth, celebrates the arts, culture, and heritage, promotes recreation while developing a resilient economy founded on social caring and environmental stewardship.
~The Town of Huntsville’s vision[/dropcap]
The Town of Huntsville recently updated its Strategic Plan and, as part of that process, took an innovative approach: they wanted to ensure that it was a ‘living’ document that was accessible, transparent, and easy to update so that the community would be kept informed as the goals determined by council are achieved.
“It’s fairly typical for strategic plans to be static documents that are developed and, sadly, sometimes put on the shelf and forgotten about,” said Town of Huntsville CAO Denise Corry. “So we decided to take a different approach. We wanted to make sure we had the ability to keep the information live and up to date. As different strategic priority items are completed, we can provide updates on the website, which allows the community to see the status of those strategic priority items that were identified and committed to within the plan.”
Huntsville’s Strategic Plan 2019-2023 includes more than 120 objectives within six key strategic areas: Economic Development, Culture and Wellness, Natural Environment and Sustainability, Roads and Infrastructure, Governance and Communications.
The Town of Huntsville’s strategic plan pillars 2019-2023 (Town of Huntsville)
“One of the key directives identified by council is to make sure that we are continually looking at ways to make processes more efficient and hopefully more cost effective while serving our community,” said Corry.
“Although there are many strategic priorities noted within the plan, some of the focus areas include a strong commitment to health care within our community, infrastructure and roads by carrying on and adding to the work of the previous term of council and innovation and technology by expanding the scope of services such as broadband,” said Corry.
“The important thing to note with this process is it’s all very aligned,” said Corry. “Council approved the strategic plan that identifies the areas that they want staff to focus on specifically during their term. Staff then incorporated this information into their 2019-2023 business plans which speaks to the resources it takes to implement those priorities, both staffing and financial and aligns the projects with the budget. This information will then be tracked and reported back to council in order to show where the commitment was made and how we did in those areas.”
Corry will report back to council once a year by providing a report card to council that outlines what the status is of the priority areas that were identified. “That way staff are accountable to council for the direction provided and council is accountable to the community in which they serve.”
Learn more about the Town of Huntsville’s Strategic Plan at myhuntsville.ca.
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With all due consideration for the extra work involved; I don’t feel that an annual report card is sufficient for Council to keep a sufficient handle on progress/expenditures. Perhaps, semi-annual reports at the end of April (when construction season nominally begins), and the end of October (when construction usually ends) would be more useful.
With respect to transportation, has the Town ever considered an RFP between Uber and Lyft to provide much-needed services and employment.
Finally, the nit-picker in me must say that Council is always capitalized, and “continual” should replace “continuous”. Sorry.
Congratulations on the inclusion in all OP pillars of the key core value, Resilience, essential for our unstable times. Well beyond now meaningless “sustainability”, Community Resilience-building is ongoing visioning and integrated preparedness that will allow our community to recover from shocks — economic, climatic, social — some currently foreseeable, some not. We’ll look forward to following the Town’s staff and councilors as they incorporate Resilience into all aspects of their planning and review.
Wonderful approach…… wonderful that all of council will continually be updated and aware of progress or lack thereof. And all of council will be an active accountable participant of the team and all citizens will be aware of the objectives or lack thereof. Democracy at its finest!!