Council developing its first strategic plan

It began with a wall covered in sticky notes and scraps of paper, but ended with a rough draft for Lancaster County Council’s first strategic plan.
Armed with lists of ideas on how to improve the quality of life for county residents, several members of Lancaster County Council, as well as other county staff members, met in Columbia on Jan. 14-16 to hammer out ideas at a strategic planning session.
Held at the University of South Carolina’s Institute for Governmental Services, the session allowed council to identify and prioritize the needs of the county.
“It was probably one of the most productive meetings we’ve ever had,” said Council Chairwoman Kathy Sistare. “It was totally interactive and everyone participated. We worked from the early morning until 5 p.m. each day.”
At the meeting with Sistare were council members Larry McCullough, Larry Honeycutt, Cotton Cole and Charlene McGriff, as well as County Administrator Steve Willis, Deputy Administrator Jeff Naftal and Clerk to Council Debbie Hardin. Councilmen Jack Estridge and Rudy Carter were unable to attend.
Sistare said council worked with consultants, including Bill Tomes with the Institute for Public Service and Policy Research at the University of South Carolina, who compiled the information and will help draft the county’s finalized strategic plan.
The group began by posting lists of county priorities on the walls of their conference room and then focused the ideas into a comprehensive whole.
“This was the first time we’ve all sat down together like this,” she said. “We wanted to concentrate strictly on Lancaster County and what are the needs of the county.”
How it began
Sistare said the meeting came after months of planning, spanning back to the end of last summer.
That’s when council decided to address the county’s increasing population and drastic unemployment rates, by combining several studies, forecasts and plans previously developed, into a long-term strategic plan for Lancaster County.
Council members wanted to find a way to integrate items from other studies and reports it has commissioned, including the U.S. 521/S.C. 9 corridor study and its capital priorities list.
They also wanted to develop a process for handling issues they can’t specifically plan for, such as a bill recently passed by the state Legislature called the Preservation of Evidence Act. The act requires the county to store evidence for several types of criminal cases in atmosphere-controlled rooms.
Last fall, council held a series of planning sessions, featuring presentations from the county’s various departments, where each discussed its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Each presentation highlighted different concerns and priorities for each department, from the sheriff’s office worrying about overcrowding in the county’s jail to the county’s fire service monitoring a manpower shortage.
Using data collected from each meeting, Tomes compiled a report of his findings and presented the results during the planning session in Columbia.
After reviewing all the information, council began to plant the seeds for its first strategic plan.
“We all have the same goal – to decrease unemployment and increase economic development opportunities,” she said. “We made the decision we’re not going to look back, we’re only going to look forward.”
Other important ideas council discussed include updating the county’s capital improvement plan, stepping up maintenance on county buildings, detailing space allocation for county departments and em-ployees and coming up with strategic locations for its buildings and departments.
“The most important thing is to focus on jobs, economic development and infrastructure,” Sistare said. “We also decided we want to be a more transparent government. We want to be able to have talking points on economic development issues coming up and to talk about changes we want to make so people know what we’re doing.”
She said council members also reviewed information gathered from a survey of county residents last fall.
“What we found is that people have a genuine concern about being proud of their county, and jobs are one of their priorities,” she said. “Safety is another big issue. People want to feel comfortable where they are.”
To address residents’ concerns, council decided their strategic plan will include holding a series of town hall meetings throughout the county, Sistare said.
“We want to have these meetings in each district, where we have a question-and-answer session to let the public voice their concerns,” she said. “We want people to see council as a whole, so people feel comfortable speaking to all of us.”
What’s next?
Despite not taking any formal action during the planning session, Sistare said council did formulate a clear plan for the county.
“We went through everyone’s ideas,” she said. “We wanted to look at ways to benefit all the districts. We wanted to look at Lancaster County as a whole, with no divisions.”
Naftal was impressed with the speed council members moved through the process and the ideas they developed.
“I think the end result reflects the citizens, reflects the council, reflects the staff and reflects businesses,” he said.
USC consultants are now working on creating a formal document with a mission statement and goals. Council may receive that this week.
Sistare said the consultants will send council a preliminary report which council can amend as they see fit.
“Hopefully, by the end of February, we’ll have something concrete in place,” she said. “We’ve included timetables in the document because we don’t want it to sit on the shelf when it’s done. We want it ready to go.”
Naftal agrees with the urgency of getting the document in place.
“This county has not had a mission statement before,” Naftal said. “This is good because it gives us a direction and that’s always a good thing.”