do you want to do?” ….
do you want to do?” and “Who do you want to do it for?”
There was also disagreement about how much public involvement should be in the process.
“I don’t think it should be in the public forum until it is done,” Brandl said, suggesting the county staff develop a plan and then flesh it out at the board level.
Purely administrative staff meetings are generally not subject to the laws governing open meetings in Wisconsin and the public would not have the ability to attend those meetings.
Others on the committee wanted to reach out to the Wisconsin County’s Association or other counties who have recently completed strategic planning efforts.
Floyd gave the example that she would like to see more training of new board members as part of the county’s five year plan. She said there has been no formal training for her and others who are newer on the board.
Mildbrand said he took exception to Floyd’s comments viewing it as saying he was an ineffective county board supervisor because he did not go through any training when he was elected. “I have never gone to what I consider an indoctrination session with the WCA,” Mildbrand said.
Supervisor Sue Swiantek spoke up from the audience saying that as a newer board member it would have been helpful to have a little more mentorship with the senior member and said there should be training for board members.
“My mentors were Fred Parent, Joe Sweda, Al Beadles, Jim Metz, Chuck Zenner and George Southworth,” Mildbrand said. “The first day I walked into a finance committee I was so intimidated that I was afraid to say anything. He said that within a few months he felt more comfortable.
After lengthy discussion about how to begin, the suggestion was made to use SWOT analysis as a starting point. In this participants list the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT).
In this they would ask board members and staff to identify what they feel the county is doing well, what the county’s weaknesses are as well as looking at opportunities to improve and at potential outside threats.
The information will be collected through the county clerk’s office where staff will cross reference it to see if there are patterns and then bring it to the committee which will meet again toward the end of July.
