Overview of township draft strategic plan given
By Dana Casadei
During the Bloomfield Township Board of Trustees meeting on Monday, October14, the consulting firm BerryDunn returned to present their draft of the township’s next five-year strategic plan.
For those who followed the workshop-like meeting on Monday, August 12 – where trustees worked with prompts from BerryDunn to come up with everything from potential mission statements for the township to strategic goals and priorities – much of the ideas BerryDunn presented were similar to their initial discussion, with zero glaring changes.
Jen Ferguson, senior consultant for BerryDunn, went over draft mission and vision statements, values and five strategic priorities; the latter each came with their own goal statements, objectives, outcomes, and performance measures.
The objectives were determined by Bloomfield Township department heads and two deputies who represented the board of trustees on the leadership board.
“The leadership team worked really hard and rolled up their shelves to figure out what these objectives would be,” Ferguson said. “The outcomes are what they were looking to achieve.”
“The department heads had the hardest job,” said supervisor Dani Walsh.
The five strategic priorities the leadership board came up with were vibrant quality of life, welcoming community, preserve community character, reliable infrastructure and best-in-class government.
“The board did a lot of good work in your plan development session… the priorities became quite clear,” said Ferguson.
There weren’t many changes asked from the board regarding the items that went with each strategic priority. The only two items that brought up discussion were the strategic priorities themselves – vibrant quality of life and preserving community character in particular.
Clerk Martin Brook stated that he felt that vibrant quality of life is more something one would see in a place, such as his example of a retirement home, instead of a township. After some discussion it was decided they would switch the wording slightly, changing it to vibrant lifestyle instead of vibrant quality of life.
Preserving community character was another strategic priority that brought up comments, this time from Brook and trustee Chris Kolinski.
“It seems like we’re trying to show all the rules instead of embracing a community feel,” Kolinski said. “It feels like a lot of 'don’t do’s' instead of 'do’s.'”
Fellow board members disagreed slightly, saying that a set of guidelines would be beneficial to those who are new to the community so they know how things – such as the process for adding a fence or addition to their home – would work when they move to Bloomfield Township.
There was no direct resolution about how the trustees wanted this strategic priority to be worded, with multiple members noting it was far too late to do any wordsmithing, as the agenda item occurred after over three hours of public comment.
No objectives were made to the other strategic priorities suggested by BerryDunn, with many excited about the idea of bringing back the ambassador program to welcome new residents, creating a stronger brand identity for Bloomfield Township and producing a calendar of events to be distributed throughout the township, all of which were listed under the objectives for the strategic priority of welcoming community.
As far as the suggested mission and vision statements from BerryDunn, all on the board seemed content with the mission, with many having feedback for the vision statement though.
“I think the mission statement is realistic and captures what we talked about last time,” said trustee Neal Barnett.
The mission statement draft read, “Bloomfield Township delivers best-in-class services, fostering a premier community, where all can thrive while protecting our natural resources, in a fiscally responsible manner.”
Many on the board did suggest that the proposed vision statement: “Bloomfield Township is a safe, inviting and vibrant community where people feel a sense of connection and residents’ quality of life is enhanced with outdoor recreation opportunities, well-maintained infrastructure and natural spaces, leading-edge technology, and an exemplary Township workforce,” was far too long though.
Kolinski also brought up the point that it’s hard to be exemplary in just one of those areas written in the vision statement let alone all of them without setting them up for failure and being fiscally irresponsible.
The board asked BerryDunn to work on revising the vision statement.
BerryDunn will return to the board at their meeting on Monday, October 28, with the changes suggested, and then begin the next steps to start the implementation plan which will allow the township to achieve the set goals.
