July 16 Strategic Plan Workshop Summary

By Linda Margaretic

Agenda and Materials
https://plumascoca.portal.civicclerk.com/event/1778/files/agenda/5948
 
Video
https://plumascoca.portal.civicclerk.com/event/1778/media
 
Introduction
This was the first of a series of meetings/workshops to create a Strategic Plan for Plumas County.  Today’s meeting focused on the supervisors and department heads. There were many county departments represented. I’d say there were about 35 to 40 people present. Guy McNett and I were the only non-county elected or non-county employees present.
 
Board members attending today were Mimi Hall, Jeff Engel and Kevin Goss. There was a quorum.
 
The session was led by a contracted facilitator, Galen Ellis. Zach Gately gave an excellent environmental and demographic scan of our county. Worth a watch.  (Go to minute 19 in the video for his presentation) Discussion followed.  Challenges that were brought up included businesses closing due to online shopping, covid, etc.  The State’s stringent regulations and their impact on businesses and construction. Low median household income.
 
Work Accomplished Today
We broke into 5 groups for a “visioning” exercise. A Vision Statement is a futuristic view of what we want to create. The statement my group came up with was:  A foundation of public health and safety that invites and supports industry and balanced growth, environmental stewardship and collaborative community partnerships.
 
After the lunch break the facilitator had us all select the most important features of our Vision Statements and create a Mission Statement.  The Mission Statement summarizes the County’s core purpose. It describes who we are: 
1) Community based leadership
2) Stewards of the public good. 
It states the needs we exist to fill:
1) Health and safety
2) Sustainable future. 
It speaks of our unique role:
1) Fiscally responsible
2) Protecting our communities. 
And finally, how we do this:
1) Collaboration
2) Transparency
​3) Government teamwork.
 
The next exercise was to list our Values.  These are the guiding principles for the County.  There were many idealistic words and phrases given – too many to list here.
 
What Next?
There will be a report on Strategic Plan progress at an August BOS meeting.  Departments will give their input. There will be workshops for county employees, department heads as well as workshops for the community. The Board will finalize and approve the Vision, Mission and Values by the time the budget is approved in October.
 
Mimi said that today’s work is the foundational core for the work carried out by the county. Each department will identify priorities they can work on and will use the core vision, mission and values to carry them out.
 
It will be interesting to see how these lofty and idealistic concepts of the Strategic Plan translate into action by our local government.
 
Next regular BOS meeting – Tuesday, August 5th 10 a.m.  At this meeting most likely Chad Hermann will be formally appointed as sheriff.