On February 14th Paul Blais of MDB Insight presented a draft Strategic Plan to Madawaska Valley Council. (photo above) The proposed plan resulted from consultation with Council, Township staff and approximately 50 members of the public on November 21st and incorporated the results of an online and hard copy survey that was available to the public for completion between November 21st and December 11th. Blais told Council that 209 surveys were returned. Based on a total population of 4,123 this represents 5 percent of residents.
The proposal is based on the previous Strategic Plan the same consultant prepared for Madawaska Valley in 2015, The Path Forward. Blais had said at the public meeting on November 21st that the update would not be a complex, lengthy document. Rather, he said, “The outcome of all this isn’t going to be a big document like the 2015 report strategy-wise. It’s really actually going to be a two-pager. And this is a very intentional request from the municipality because they want something that the public can visualize quickly and see what the priorities are.”
However, while shorter than The Path Forward, the draft plan presented on February 14 was no “two-pager.” It was 17 pages in total, with five pages devoted to Strategic Priorities and Action Plan. The list of Action Items had increased from 30 to 41. Blais reviewed many Action Items and members of Council suggested amendments as he went along. CAO Suzanne Klatt asked for some action items to be expanded, reminding Blais that, “The main goal when we set out the Strategic Plan was to have a comprehensive document that we can review yearly at budget time [and] to hold Council and staff accountable to continually review it to ensure that we are staying on the strategic priority path that we are setting today.”
He reviewed the four main themes and said feedback from the public was incorporated in three ways (indicated in bold below):
- Open government: “communication” is now included
- Progressive and growing economy
- Healthy lifestyles: “sustainability” regarding the long term health of the community at large, both environmental and concerns for “healthcare”
- Efficient and effective Township services
Measuring effectiveness
A new initiative this time is a staff Work Plan showing how MV Township intends to implement the Action Items from the Strategic Plan, to be used as an annual “scorecard.” CAO Klatt shared a proposed Work Plan spreadsheet to use at budget time or whenever suitable funding opportunities arose for projects to implement some of the Action Items.
The effectiveness of the 2015 plan was not discussed because no public report has ever been disclosed showing what Action Items had been achieved, either wholly or in part. At the February 14th meeting Blais said that Council and staff had provided him with such a progress report when he met them on November 21st but at the public meeting later that day, CAO Klatt and Mayor Love said they did not share the progress report with residents, giving the excuse that they did not wish to influence community members’ feedback.
Community input
At the end of the session, Councillor David Shulist asked Blais about the survey data: “There’s general survey results, I find them quite interesting and good input from the public.… I think it would be kind of helpful for us to make any kind of decisions on action, right? We have got to hear from the public. Just my opinion. Are you going to cover this?”
Blais responded, “Well certainly we incorporated the input into the strategic priorities and we modified the priorities from 2015 based on that input. We created many of the action items around the input that was through the survey and the public session. So definitely from a strategic plan point of view I feel good that we’ve heard it and we’ve incorporated it.”
A revised plan is expected to be presented at the Council meeting on March 17th.