Strategic planning committee to see more direction from county board

Working group seeks more guidance on what county board wants to do with potentially merging standing committees

“I think we need some clear direction on where the county board would like us to go,” said Scott Mildbrand to members of the county’s strategic planning committee on July 14.

Mildbrand’s comments came with the confusion about what the committee is supposed to accomplish. It was created in response to an action by board member Lorie Floyd to consolidate county committees and undertake strategic planning.

Since the committee’s last meeting, they have sought input from both county board members and department heads to get anonymous comments about potential changes to the committee structure.

Much of Friday’s meeting was to go over the recommendations and see if there were areas of overlap which would ideally show where there were areas of more interest and where focus should be placed.

In reviewing the suggestions, there were multiple people calling for the county’s finance and personnel committee to be returned to two separate committees and with the condition that people cannot serve on both committees. There has historically been a great deal of overlap between the committees because the personnel committee is made up of the chair of the finance committee as well as the chairs of the oversight committees for the county’s largest departments.

In addition, there were calls for greater inclusion of other board members.

“There is a general feeling of county board members that there are a few people who make more decisions than what others make,” Mildbrand said.

Committee member Ray Soper said he did not see the need to make major changes to the existing committee structure, instead he said they should keep it basically the same with some “minor tweaks.”

Other suggestions called for term limits for committee memberships or rotation of board members on specific committees.

The idea of merging committees was also raised with some questioning if that would just lead to longer meetings while others questioned how this would interact with the departments.

“The intent is to combine the committees, not the departments,” Floyd said.

Committee member Catherine Lemke questioned the value of combining four committees that meet for an hour each into one committee that will end up meeting for four hours.

“It shouldn’t be a four-hour meeting,” Floyd said, noting that it should be getting reports from department heads.

“There is still a ton of discussion to be had,” said committee member Lester Lewis.

Floyd said it can be done, giving the example of Wood County, which she said went from 28 committees to 19 committees overnight after a referendum reduced the size of their county board. She said Wood County does it without an administrator and with the county board chairman serving as the administrative coordinator.

“If you are going to follow an example, they should follow the law,” Lewis replied, noting state law does not allow the county board chairman to be the administrative coordinator.

Soper gave the example of more 2.5-hour-long law enforcement meeting that had preceded the planning meeting and noting that Floyd was also at that meeting. “What part of that meeting would you have cut out?” he asked. He said there would not be the same level of discussion and introspection if committees were merged.

Floyd said she would question if meetings were micromanaging departments. “We have other counties who have done this,” she said of the consolidations. She objected to the county trying to do this process in a bubble.

“We are spinning our wheels,” Mildbrand said. “I think we need to ask the county board what their intentions are.”

The suggestion was made to “wordsmith” the various overlapping comments from both board members and department heads and bring it to the county board.

A similar process was followed with each of the committee members sharing proposed wording for mission statements. With the help of Michelle Grimm of the UW Extension office, they will work on merging these into options that will come back to the board for action as part of the strategic planning process.