Progress on two fronts

There are two projects that the City Council and I are working on. The first is developing a new strategic plan. The second is reviewing the budget around our utility rates. Since this post is longer than I expected, I will write about the utility rate issue later this week.

Twice last week, we met in work session to talk about the future of Hillsboro. Monday, I gave a presentation on what the strategic planning process is all about. In a nut shell, I described two approaches that communities use. There is a “citizen based” process where all the ideas come from community members involved in the process. This process usually takes about one year to complete. The other is a Council/Staff process where specific questions are directed to Council and staff about the direction they see Hillsboro going. A community can usually get through this process in a month to six weeks.

I generally prefer the second model because it involves me directly in the discussion with the two groups that have to implement the results of the process. I see the end results as something the City Council can then evaluate my performance by. As a new resident of Hillsboro, one cannot expect that I would have a complete handle on the needs of the community. That is the key to having both staff and Council in the same room together at the same time. I can draw on the knowledge, experience and aspirations of that key group to lay a foundation for the work we are about to do.

Our second work session began the hard work of identifying how we think about Hillsboro. I am not going to write (yet) about the results of the initial meeting except to say there is excellent raw material to work with. Here are the questions I posed to Council and staff:

Exercise 1
· How do you see Hillsboro in 10 years? Responses here tell me about the hopes and dreams we have for our town. It also compares reality with what we would like to see
· Describe the positive elements of this change
· Describe the negative elements of this change
· How would you influence things so the negative elements do not happen?

Exercise 2 (a SWOT exercise)
· Strengths – what is the community doing right
· Weaknesses – what should the community stop doing?
· Opportunities – what should the community start doing
· Threats – What is the most important problem or project that needs to be addressed?

Exercise 3
· Identify 5 significant EXTERNAL factors that will affect local government in the next two to five years.
· Identify 5 significant INTERNAL factors that will affect local government in the next two to five years.
· What trends might have a major impact on the local government in the next five years:
o Demographics
o Economic
o Social
o Technological
o Environments
o Political
o Regulatory or legislative

We spent 2 ½ hours identifying our responses to these questions. Our next step is to start analyzing the answers we came up with and develop an action plan around the response.