Neighbors,
This week at the City Council's annual Goal Setting work session (Weds. and Thurs from 4-8pm), the Council heard about the latest changes and ideas from the Director of Public Safety for staffing and procedure. After that presentation, the Councilors were asked to agree to this official statement/directive: "Strong council support for aggressively moving forward w PSO program". Since the rule in these meetings is Silence Means Assent, I had to speak up and say that I could never give strong support to the program without having a strategic plan which explains what the program is and where it's headed.
I then provided a printout to councilors showing a sampling of 50 other public safety, fire, and police departments' strategic plans (you can see this at http://bit.ly/ps-strategic-plans), and I explained how strategic planning is a very normal process for complex organizations...and how general guidance in our Council Goals doesn't provide the level of oversight needed for this critical program.
Resistance to developing a Five Year Strategic Plan for Public Safety was expressed in these statements:
- If we release a strategic plan, opponents will work against meeting the goals and use that as ammunition against the PSO program.
- No other department has this level of scrutiny from City Council; no other department has to prepare strategic plans.
- The program is changing, and so we have to allow those changes to occur first.
- The PSO program changes too quickly to formally document it in a strategic plan.
My own view -- having participated in and facilitated strategic planning for years -- is that a strategic plan for this "PSO Model" is sorely needed. As a community and a council, we NEED to know the direction of this program. If firefighters or police officers aren't onboard with the strategic plan, then they'll know enough to make an informed long-term decision to stay or leave. We all deserve to know what changes are being planned, and have access to the research behind it. I'll continue to bang the drum for residents on our desire to document where this program is headed, when we expect to get there, and why we're doing it...and to encourage my fellow City Councilors to actively perform their oversight role as required by the City Code; my whole government philosophy for strong accountability and transparency demands that I continue pursuing this, and I hope you'll join me.
My goal is to see a Five Year Strategic Plan for Public Safety (similar to the ones I linked to above) ready to execute by the end of 2019. That means I'll need to introduce a referral to council for a vote in the near future. If you agree with this initiative, then I ask you to e-mail the seven City Councilors at citycouncil@cedarfalls.com and express your support.
Very respectfully,
Rob