A Strategic Plan Won't Solve County Woes

Jeff Green | Jul 11, 2013

I have never been a fan of strategic plans. While they are a good idea in theory, and can be useful in some circumstances, they can also be hopelessly vague, and provide nothing more than a payday for professional facilitators and a forum for long-winded discussions about “blue sky” initiatives.

So, I for one, lost little sleep over the failure of the Frontenac County Strategic Plan a few months ago. The plan came to Council on December 20 last year, right when the battle over Warden Gutowski remaining in her post was at its height.

“The plan talks about co-operation," South Frontenac Mayor Davison said at the time, “and we have just seen that there is no co-operation around this table.”

The plan, which was still in draft form, was rejected and the consultants who were working on it beat a hasty retreat from the meeting. No doubt they made sure to submit their invoice before leaving the building.

Now, it seems, a Strategic Plan is again in Frontenac County's future, this time under the direct supervision of the council itself, rather than as a staff-managed initiative. Whether it does any good or is another waste of time and money is anybody's guess.

The very fact that Council is insisting on full control over the Strat Plan and a services review that is already underway is an indication of a deep rift between Council and its senior staff. Council has made it clear that they feel manipulated by staff reports and they simply don’t trust staff to carry out their stated wishes. There are broad implications to this, implications that will doom strategic or any other type of long-term planning.

I have written about this before, and the situation has not improved since then. Normally it is the warden who mediates the relationship between the political desires of the council and the bureaucratic reality that county staff face on a day-to-day basis. But with all that has happened over the last six months the warden is not in a position to do that.

To further complicate matters, there is talk of consulting with each of the townships and conducting public meetings about the county plan. It will become a democratic exercise, which is all well and good, except it will only bring more information and more perspectives forward, which will make it even more difficult for a council that is already at war with itself to come to a definitive set of common goals to strive for in the years to come.

My fearless prediction is that the County Strategic Plan will yield little, if any tangible results, but what it will do is occupy Council’s time and energy until well into next year, which is a municipal election year.

And nothing of significance is likely to happen during an election year.