Photo: A typical community planning session — somewhere — not in Archuleta County.
People love change.
People fear change.
If those statements are both true, how can our government leaders best plan for the future? In particular, how should they create their ‘Strategic Plans’?
I mentioned, in Part One, the eight-page Strategic Plan published by the national organization, Strong Towns. This organization has, as its central goal, the improvement of civic life everywhere in America. Not just in one town; everywhere.
The Strong Towns leadership determined that an eight-page plan was what they needed.
I also mentioned in Part One, that I’ve helped write a couple of plans for government-funded projects, here in Pagosa Springs. The plan for Pagosa Peak Open School was over 400 pages long. The strategic plan for the San Juan Water Conservancy District was 48 pages long.
Could those plans have been eight pages long, and served the same purpose? Perhaps not.
There’s the plan. And then, there’s the planning.
In Part Two of this editorial series, I shared a quote from President (and General) Dwight Eisenhower in The New York Times, 1957:
“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything…” In an emergency, the first thing to do is “to take all the plans off the top shelf and throw them out the window…”
“But if you haven’t been planning you can’t start to work, intelligently at least,” he said…
This quote suggests an interesting idea. If the plan is worthless, but planning is everything…
…that is to say, if what is crucially important is not the finished plan, but the process of writing the plan…
…then, why would you hire a stranger from Oregon, or Michigan, to write your plan?
I ask that question because, earlier this year, the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners hired Civic* Possible, a remote team of two people, to create a strategic plan for the County government.
I have no doubt the Civic* Possible team — Jason Schneider and Rachel Barra — are fine and intelligent people. Mr. Schneider, in particular, appears to have considerable experience with government. From his website bio:
Before starting Civic* Possible, he’s created meaningful change in a broad range of roles and projects for over two decades. These roles include Marquette City Councillor, Alaska’s Innovation Officer, Marion County’s Economic Development Manager, Executive Director of the Marquette Chamber of Commerce, and business/organizational coach in Michigan, Tonga, Vietnam, and Australia.
But I want to get back to the central point.
The crucially important part of planning is not “the plan”. It’s the planning process. The plan doesn’t even matter much, in the end, if we consider the historical evidence.
In 2015, a group of young mothers from Archuleta County began visiting innovative schools in Colorado and New Mexico. These young ladies were planning to start a publicly-funded charter school, in alignment with the Colorado Charter Schools Act of 1992. None of them had experience starting or operating a school — although they had all attended schools, and they all had been raising young children, so they had vague ideas about what kind of educational experience they wanted for their children. After 17 visits to various schools — public charter schools and private schools — they began writing a strategic plan for Pagosa Peak Open School. As I mentioned, the final plan, as presented to the Archuleta School District Board of Education, was over 400 pages long. (I’m happy to say, my granddaughters have been attending the school.)
Was the plan — the document itself — important? Yes, in the sense that the Board of Education could read it and determine whether the founders had a fairly good understanding of what they were getting into and what is required of a public school in Colorado.
But the most important part was the actual research and writing of the document. As things have turned out, Pagosa Peak Open School — soon to start its eighth year of operation — has changed and grown beyond what was written in the plan. Practically speaking, the changes to ‘the plan’ began from the day the doors opened in 2017.
Could we, the founders, have hired a clever (and expensive) consultant to write the 400-page plan for PPOS? Matter of fact, we couldn’t. We were all volunteers, from working families. We didn’t have the money necessary. So the plan was written by the very people who would start out as the governing board for PPOS. And I will argue that, in fact, that’s how strategic planning ought to take place.
The other strategic plan I helped write was adopted by the San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD) in 2021, but the planning for the document began in 2019. You can download the 48-page plan here.
SJWCD is supported by the District taxpayers, while the Board members are volunteers. Since its creation in 1989, the District has had, as it’s central goal, the creation of new water reservoirs.
It has not created any. Creating reservoirs is not an easy thing to do.
In 2019, the SJWCD Board looked back at its history, and noted that it had not adopted a comprehensive strategic plan covering the full range of possible improvements to our community’s water infrastructure.
So, should a consultant be hired, to write the plan? Maybe a consultant from Oregon or Michigan, who may or may not understand the physical, cultural and political landscape in Archuleta County?
In particular, the political landscape?
In the end, the SJWCD Board decided to write its own Strategic Plan. It took two years to write, with various Board members tackling different chapters.
The plan is worthless, practically speaking. But planning is everything. In my estimation, the process of writing the SJWCD strategic plan gave the Board members a much fuller understanding of their own district, and of water issues in general.
But there’s another curious aspect to the SJWCD Strategic Plan, adopted in 2021. Only one person involved in writing the plan is still serving on the Board in 2024.
The same situation exists with the PPOS Board of Directors… Everyone has moved on, except one Board member.
Does that fact add a fascinating twist to the value of “strategic planning”…?
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.