Last Updated January 18, 2012Strategic Planning OverviewLatest News:View the Town's 3-prong Strategic Plan as presented to the Board of Selectmen. Background:Mission Statement - “To provide the highest quality public service through professionalism dedicated to excellence.” The Town’s Mission Statement was developed to provide guidance for the department heads and staff in conducting Town business. We have made a concerted effort to apply the principles embodied in our Mission Statement to our day to day operations. The Town’s department heads consistently operate with a forward thinking, fiscally prudent mindset. They find ways to maintain stability in their budgets from year to year such as continuously evaluating the efficiency of operations, working together to effectively utilize resources among departments, obtaining grants to cover the cost of needed items, as well as using in-house staff to complete various projects in lieu of hiring outside contractors or consultants whenever possible. In keeping with this concept, the department heads, along with the Board of Selectmen, took on the strategic planning initiative for the Town. Back in 2004, the department heads participated in a training workshop to get a basic understanding of the strategic planning concept. Once the training was conducted, a Strategic Planning Steering Committee was established and included a mix of representatives from the Town/School governing bodies, management, staff and citizen representation. In early 2006, the Strategic Planning Steering Committee completed the framework for the development of a town wide strategic plan and the model to be used by the departments. During 2006, this was rolled out to the Board of Selectmen, School Board and Town and School department heads. The goal of the process was to develop a rolling 5-year operating plan for all Town and School departments, to be utilized as a framework for annual budgeting into the future. This framework included a three-pronged approach encompassing process and control, employee consideration and customer consideration. Each Town and School department then created a “SWOT” (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis to be used in developing each department’s portion of the overall plan. Each department was then tasked with completing an outline of the top six challenges facing the department over the next five years, as well as the steps needed to be taken to address these challenges. The goal of this analysis was to address both tangible (budgetary) as well as intangible (operational processes, employee considerations, organization issues) items to be incorporated into the town-wide plan. Throughout the process, Town and School department heads met jointly to review the results of the analysis, and at the end of the process, the results were shared with the Board of Selectmen and School Board. In 2009, the Town department heads made an effort to re-energize the Strategic Planning Initiative and held a meeting with the Board of Selectmen to begin the process. Since much of the previous focus had been on process control and budgetary impacts, one of the goals of the department heads is to reemphasize the remaining two prongs of the Strategic Plan model, employee consideration and customer consideration. As part of this initiative, each department head, many in conjunction with their staff, updated their SWOT analysis and presented the results to the Board of Selectmen, as well as discussed their top two primary goals and objectives to be pursued over the next twenty-four months. The results of the departmental SWOT analyses are included as attachments to this overview. The next step will be for department heads to utilize their SWOT analyses to develop goals and objectives for the next two-three years and present a draft Strategic Plan to the Board prior to the fall budget workshops. It is anticipated that a final Strategic Plan document will likely be completed by Spring 2010. Learn More: |
