More direction needed for county strategic planning

A hot mess.

That is the charitable description of the current state of Taylor County’s efforts to overhaul county operations with the goals of consolidating committees, getting more inclusion of board members, reducing micromanaging, reducing operational costs, empowering department heads, developing a long range vision for the county, and bringing about peace in our time.

With all the enthusiasm of a toddler who doesn’t want to go down for a nap, Taylor County is going through a strategic planning process, while at the same time looking at consolidating the county’s committee structure with the seemingly contradictory goal of getting more county board members involved in the decision making process.

Committee chairman Scott Mildbrand is wisely leading the special committee back to the county board at next month’s meeting to get more direction on where they should be headed. It is unclear at this point if there is a consensus among committee members about what they are supposed to be doing.

The underlying current is a desire to shift county government from being a committee-centric model, where authority and control are spread among several more or less equal, powerful committees, to one that is more board-centric with far weaker committees that exist to review reports from department heads and refer things to the county board. Such a move, proponents claim, would allow all board members to have input on all issues that impact the entire county.

A solution championed by board member Lorie Floyd is to create Frankenstein committees by merging several committees into one, somehow with the expectation that fewer committees will mean more representation and reduce the amount of time board members and staff spend sitting in meeting rooms and also be a cost savings to taxpayers.

She correctly notes that there are counties, such as Wood County, which have consolidated their committee structure. The radical difference being that the full Wood County board meets every month and that county’s department heads have authority to take wider action without needing to consult with their oversight committees. By comparison, in Taylor County it was considered a major win for would-be reformers to get the board to agree to schedule four meetings a year.

Taylor County has been resistant to centralizing authority with the fear of the potential for abuse of that authority. This is understandable and, in certain situations, admirable. However it makes for confusion for staff and department heads about who, when and how they are supposed to answer to.

The hands-on nature of Taylor County’s committee structure gives significant latitude to committee chairs to develop their own style of leadership and relationship with the department heads and staff, ranging from collegial to adversarial.

High-priced business consultants and any number of management handbooks are united in the need for organizations to establish clearly defined, attainable goals. The county board, as a body, needs to define the goal of the strategic planning committee and prioritize the committee’s mission.

The county also needs to set what the goal posts look like.

Will the end product be an attractive, 27-page document that will be put in a binder on a shelf never to be looked at again, or is there some larger target to fundamentally shift how Taylor County government looks and functions?

At the same time, board members need to be able to answer how any of this benefits the residents of Taylor County.