Madison: Conley, Baillie, and Wolkowitz Point to Initial Successes of the Borough's Strategic Planning Initiative

By David Luber

In a joint statement, Madison Mayor Conley, Borough Council President Astri Baillie and Councilman Ben Wolkowitz, all candidates for re-election in 2015, point to early successes of the borough’s current strategic planning initiative. The initiative, organized into four separate volunteer committees, has focused on the following areas of government: the municipal budget, municipal utilities, capital, and borough operations, respectively. All four committees have presented their initial results to the council and their reports are available on RoseNet.

Mayor Conley stated, “I promised that I would support the creation of a strategic planning process for the borough when I first ran for mayor in 2011. Authorized by the borough council in 2013 and managed by Councilman Wolkowitz, this project has generated guidelines, processes and projects that will all contribute to improving life in Madison. Although members of the council and borough administration have been involved in the project from its inception, I firmly believe that the successes of this project have come as a direct result of the efforts of its many resident volunteers.”

“At the outset it was decided that residents should have the dominant role. Although one council member was appointed to each committee, they were precluded from being the committee chair. As anticipated, residents with relevant expertise in each of the subject areas stepped up and contributed generously of their time and expertise. It is no exaggeration that hundreds of hours were donated to this project,” continued Wolkowitz.

What has all this effort produced? Conley, Baillie, and Wolkowitz responded that “The Municipal Budget Strategic Plan Committee produced guidelines to assist the budget process so that objective measures could be applied to proposed budgets to ensure that the borough is acting prudently. Also, the committee has encouraged and the council has accepted that the annual budget be reviewed within the context of a multi-year process. This is explicit recognition that any successful annual budgeting be viewed as part of a continuum and not as a standalone event. And finally, the committee’s concern with the difficulty in understanding the budget has resulted in several recommendations to improve budget presentations. Although the committee report was issued too late for its recommendations to become fully integrated into the 2015 budget process, there was general agreement that even in draft form it provided useful assistance to the council in their deliberations.”

The budget guidelines were formally adopted by the council on July 13.

“The Capital Strategic Planning Committee completed the mammoth task of compiling information on all capital assets owned by the borough,” stated Conley, Baillie, and Wolkowitz. “No one that we have spoken with can remember such a compilation ever having been produced before. There are many benefits to such an accounting. The most important benefit may well be the assistance it gives the borough administration and the council to more accurately budget for capital maintenance and replacement. Preliminary estimates of how much should be allocated to capital have been completed and they will be refined as the committee continues its work. In the next phase, engineers from the community have volunteered to assist the committee in firming up its estimates.

The Utilities Strategic Plan Committee developed a framework in which to analyze the key elements of the utilities mission. The Committee felt that the utilities need to be reliable, priced competitively and should produce surpluses to be applied to the municipal budget. They proposed objective measures to assess performance relative to mission statement principles. When applied to the borough, it was determined that we were doing quite well. The remaining aspect of the operation of the utilities that needs to be resolved is capital requirements. That is currently being worked on with the assistance of an outside consulting firm.”

“Finally, our Operations Strategic Plan Committee surveyed our residents and found that among other things, we as a community feel that we need better ways to learn about what is going on in town, added Council President Baillie. “In addition there needs to be improvements in how residents are able to inform the appropriate part of the borough government when they have issues. The committee decided that a better RoseNet website had the potential to resolve many of these complaints. An outside firm has been hired and a new website should be available before the end of the year. Other suggestions are also being addressed and will be rolled out in the future.”

Wolkowitz concluded, “This work is testimony to our volunteers who are what make Madison such a special town. I offer my personal thanks and the thanks of the entire council and administration to those who volunteered for this project. As a result of their efforts, Madison will become an even better place to live and work in.”