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CAO HELEN COLLIER : EVERY CITY NEEDS A GOOD PLAN
Gregg Chamberlain
goals. The «parking lot» component of the plan will help provide some flexibility by giving council and staff a means to create a new goals list for future versions of the plan. But, as Collier emphasized during her presentation, the process to create the strategic plan needs the whole community behind it. That means a series of brains- torming workshops for various sectors, including the business community but also covering other interest groups like seniors, youth, families, and others. Each village in the rural area along with the Town of Rockland will have its own separate brains- torming session and Collier urges residents in St-Pascal-Baylon, Bourget, Clarence Creek, and Cheney-Hammond to mark the day down on the calender for their com- munity’s workshop and make a point of coming out to help provide their thoughts and ideas on what Clarence-Rockland needs. «Sustainability is something that comes out of a strategic plan,» she said, «It makes us look like we’re well-managed. So we’re going to ask the community what’s mis- sing.» Collier points to the City of Kingston as an example of a municipality which has benefited from having definite guidelines for managing its resources and planning for improvements. «Kingston has done a very nice strategic plan,» she said, «which has helped them revitalize their downtown core.»
Before the year is out the City of Clarence- Rockland will have a strategic plan to help guide both municipal council and its staff with decisions that will shape the future of the city. That is the goal for Helen Col- lier as part of her strategic plan for the first year of her official tenure as the city’s chief administrative officer. Collier presented her arguments, and supporting facts, for launching a strategic planning process for the city during Cla- rence-Rockland council’s April regular pu- blic session. Her proposal, which received a hearty endorsement from mayor and councillors, was the result of more than a year of study, research, and reflection. The key point and strength of Clarence- Rockland’s strategic plan, and the process behind its creation, is that the entire com- munity both supports and is involved in drafting it. «We’re asking the community what their level of satisfaction is with all the services,» Collier said. «The strategic plan is there to deliver the right services that the public wants.» This is a selling point for both attracting more outside business investment for the city and also maintaining the established businesses. Having a definite three-year strategic plan, which also includes a «par- king lot» collection of future goals that follow-up revisions of the plan will address over time, will help instill confidence in potential investors that Clarence-Rockland is a good place to plant commercial or in-
CAO Helen Collier keeps an orderly pile of files at her desk as she works out details for the strategic planning process for the City of Clarence-Rockland.
dustrial roots and watch their investments grow. «The thing I see with the strategic plan is that the municipality will now have goals and objectives to achieve,» Collier said. «A future business looking to set up here will have a clear idea of what the city’s plans are.» It’s all about creating investor confi- dence. Clarence-Rockland council and staff have always had goals they wanted
to achieve, but in the past the vagaries and changing demands of both council and the public have often resulted in dropped plans or shifts in priorities, which can make some goals hard to achieve. The strategic plan will be a hardcopy document that states what the general goals for the city are, list specific objectives to work towards those goals during the next three years, and pro- vide a way to evaluate success in achieving those objectives and moving towards those
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