As part of an ongoing plan to make Seymour government more efficient, First Selectman Kurt Miller wants to create a 10-year strategic plan committee.
The idea is for the committee to create a list a best practices — a strategic plan — that would, hopefully, keep town government running smoothly regardless of who is serving as First Selectman or on the various governing bodies in town.
Miller told the Valley Indy last week an informal committee is already in place, but he wants the Board of Selectmen to officially create and appoint people. In addition, the town attorney is drafting a local ordinance that will spell out the new committee’s responsibilities.
The strategic plan committee would be the latest in a series of efforts to modernize Seymour government. Miller was elected Nov. 5 to a second, two-year term. When he was first elected, he unveiled a 100-day plan — a list of things his new administration wanted to get done. It included items such as adding a human resources manager to the town’s payroll and conducting reviews of employee performance.
The strategic plan committee will be somewhat similar, in that it will take practices that Seymour government does well and put them into a set of guidelines.
Example: Miller said his administration has kept the town’s fund balance — money not spent — at around 6.5 percent. The town has a goal to get that fund balance to 10 percent, so that Seymour looks better for credit and finance agencies.
“But policies such as that are not written down anywhere,” Miller said. “So we want the make something like the fund balance an actionable item. We need a statement saying in the next 10 years we want to get our fund balance up and here are the steps we are going to take to do that.”
The goal is to make a strategic plan useful to future town leaders.
“Many times towns or municipalities do these 10-year strategic plans and they look really nice, and then the plans just sit up on a shelf somewhere,” Miller said. “We’re setting this up so that very specific guidelines are followed.”
The First Selectman, the finance director, and the director of operations will report to the new committee once a quarter to talk about progress being made and areas where local government is efficient.
“It’s going to take some time to put this plan together. We’ve had a lot of this put together informally, but we’ve never put it on paper. This will be a comprehensive document that any First Selectman going forward will need to maintain and update,” Miller said. “It will also give the people making decisions a better understanding of what’s going on in all aspects of the town.”
The item could come up for discussion at a Board of Selectmen meeting later this month.