Politics & Government
Selectmen Seek Feedback on New Strategic Initiatives
Amherst Selectmen have launched two initiatives to improve town services.
The Amherst Board of Selectmen has launched two key initiatives aimed at advancing the breadth, quality and efficiency of town services.
The first initiative, a strategic communications initiative launched in May 2013, aims to help those in town government build stronger engagement with citizens by increasing the quality and timeliness of two-way communications.
It has three goals:
- Keep citizens apprised of town activities, deliberations, and decision-making.
- Implement more ways for citizens to share their views with selectmen more often.
- Identify and launch more ways for citizens to conduct town business online.
To solicit citizen feedback, the selectmen have launched an online communications survey they hope citizens will use to share their opinions (located at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/AmherstWebReview)
The second initiative, launched in June 2013, is an integrated approach to strategic planning to enable the town to be more proactive in shaping its desired future.
This multi-year effort is intended to:
- Strengthen the quality of strategic thinking across town departments and administration;
- Tie proposed departmental budgets to strategic and operational plans with clear explanations of what resources departments expect to expend and why;
- Ensure that annual operating plans are responsive to town needs, communicated effectively, and well understood by Amherst citizens;
Distribute authority, responsibility, and accountability across all levels of town government, as appropriate; and - Distribute authority, responsibility, and accountability across all levels of town government, as appropriate; and
- Ensure that regular performance evaluations of all town departments and employees link their activities directly to the attainment of town goals.
“Our goal is to be able to share with voters our sense of the town’s needs and how we plan to address them. We’re working now to create plans, related budgets, and various tradeoffs well before the deliberative session,” says Board Chairman Dwight Brew, “So everyone understands the implications of different strategic choices.”
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