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Westlock County to begin work on strategic plan soon

New document should be public by the end of the year
WES - County office Oct 2021 IMG-9067

WESTLOCK – Work on Westlock County’s new strategic plan is slated to start this fall, with councillors looking forward to not only the process, but the final document which will guide the municipality for years to come.

At the county’s Sept. 20 governance and priorities meeting, Strategic Steps president Ian McCormack gave councillors a 20-minute walkthrough of the company, as well the process and timelines for the new strategic plan. The county is paying Strategic Steps $16,250, plus GST, to deliver the plan — McCormack said they do everything from candidate workshops to elected official orientations, bylaw rewrites, municipal inspections, governance reviews and strategic planning for municipalities in Alberta, B.C., the Northwest Territories and Saskatchewan.

Reeve Christine Wiese said getting an updated strategic plan is something “this council has been looking forward to” while new CAO Tony Kulbisky said in previous interview a new strategic plan will “get everybody on the same page.”

“We’re excited to get this going,” added Coun. Sherri Provencal.

Although the county’s current strategic plan doesn’t expire until 2024, McCormack said they’ll “work through that to try and figure out what got completed, what didn’t and then we’ll move our way forward.” Although many of the issues councillors deal with on a day-to-day basis are what McCormack termed “tactical” and revolve around specifics like dust control or culverts, a strategic plan takes a broader view of the municipality.

“What we bring to you as you work through your engagement process, your planning process and then your ratification process is that we’ll bring a lot of experience from other places, too. We can bring some of that to bear in terms of the questions that we ask or the insights we might be able to provide to you. Ultimately, however, the plan that you create is this council’s plan,” said McCormack.

“It is your understanding of what success looks like for you sometime into the future … maybe even a generation into the future. You’re the governors and if you’re really looking at the near-term, you’re never really getting ahead. But if you’re able to look at what success looks for Westlock County say a generation hence, chances are none of you will still be on council, but many if not all of you will still be in the community and you’ll see the impact of some of the decisions that you’ve made.”

McCormack, noting they completed strategic plans for Yellowhead, Parkland, Leduc and Kneehill counties over the past year, said they “typically bite off the first four years” and then move further into the future. McCormack said they’ll also doing some “antecedent work” as far as engagement to know what staff, citizens, businesses, and community organizations think “is success for this county.” Following that behind-the-scenes work, councillors and Strategic Steps will meet for a couple of days in November to work on the document and a draft should be back in the hands of the county within a month.

He said the “ultimate expression” for any municipality is its vision statement, while the mission statement explains how to get the county to where it wants to be.

“You won’t complete all of the work during the course of your term or the course of this plan, but you’ll get a start on it, and you can pass that on as a legacy to a future council and they can pick up the ball and run with it,” said McCormack.

“Your job is to think about the what. Then you pass on the how to your CAO and the CAO’s experts can help you work through that.”

George Blais, TownandCountryToday.com

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