INNISFAIL — The town’s new council has been given an extensive overview of the decisions made by the previous elected governing body and the work done by administration to meet the strategic vision adopted for the community.
At the town’s Agenda & Priorities meeting on Nov. 1, the newly elected council heard from the municipality’s senior management team an extensive list of all program and capital projects undertaken over the past four years, including those completed, deferred, and ones underway or upcoming.
“It’s crucial they (new councillors) are all brought up to speed, and that they understand what is going on in the organization and that they understand their roles,” said Mayor Jean Barclay, who just completed a first elected term as town councillor from 2017 to 2021. “Each director gave an overview of their area that they are in charge of. I think it’s quite eye-opening to see all the things going on in all the different areas.
“I think it was good for all of us, not just the new councillors,” added Barclay. “We all get on the same page, and we all have the same information. It is much easier to do our planning. It doesn’t help the planning if you’ve got three councillors knowing what went on the last four years and four that don’t.”
Todd Becker, the town’s chief administrative officer, began the Nov. 1 meeting by outlining the Strategic Planning Policy, which was presented to the previous council last March for approval. He told council the purpose of the strategic plan is to provide direction for long- and short-term decision making by council and management, as well as to help make “purposeful choices” among competing demands for capital and operational resources.
“Although (the) strategic plan was a useful tool and the results were reported on a regular basis up to COVID-19, priority setting procedures and communicating the results of the plan to the public did not evolve as intended,” said Becker in his report. “The intent of this information is to allow council to review where previous council's focus was and some of the tactics (actions) that were implemented in support of the strategic plan.”
Following Becker’s report, each department director presented a comprehensive overview of priority capital and operational actions and their current status from the previous four years, with the heliport upgrade file getting special attention as it’s a highly emotionally charged issue in the community.
“The intention is to get council up to speed as quickly as possible with the most pertinent information and keep adding information as we proceed,” said Becker. “We wanted to make sure the previous four years' work and anything outstanding is moved into consideration of the new council.”
Becker added the overviews presented to Innisfail’s new council also had the additional value of giving each new member a sense of past strategic priorities and whether that should continue.
“It is a learning opportunity to show all of council that there’s a framework for strategic planning that previous council chose and it’s up to new council to establish the vision moving to strategic priorities in the new year,” he said.
“It’s more of a learning tool as much as it is to take the previous priorities and determine if they are still valid with the new council.”
He added there will also be a “strategic focus” during this month’s 2022 budget deliberations but a more formal process for strategic planning will occur this coming February.
“We are anticipating a tough budget. There are certain items coming forward, like RCMP funding requirements and of course we have to determine where council wants to go on such things as the heliport, recreation and the multiplex,” said Becker.
Coun. Janice Wing, a new councillor but one who arrives with an extensive governance background, said she “appreciated how thorough” the staff overview presentations were, noting they came out of the body of work from the last and most current Strategic Plan.
“When you can see progress across the organization towards the accomplishment of the Strategic Plan, that is a checkmark in my books because often times strategic plans sit on shelves and are never seen again once they are completed,” she said.
“It also gives the council the opportunity to be thinking about what good outcomes look like when we go into our next Strategic Plan."
“Having done an amazing amount of work over four years will be important as we look at the next Strategic Plan to say, ‘what is the next body of work and what are the outcomes we need to see from that work?’’’ added Wing.
“Outcomes and outcome measurement will be a really important part of the next strat plan.”
