The Finance Committee met 08/12/2024. One of the items they voted on was a request to take $45,000 in American Recovery Plan Act dollars that were left over from other projects and put them toward funding the updating of the city’s Strategic Plan.
The committee voted 3-1 to approve the request with Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) casting the dissenting vote.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
The city had allocated $100,000 of ARPA funds toward the Neighborhood Leadership Academy and $400,000 to cover the cost of updating the city’s Comprehensive Plan. The contract for the consultant updating the Comprehensive Plan ended up only being $375,000 and the contract for the Neighborhood Leadership Academy work cost only $80,000. This left $45,000 of ARPA funds that could be obligated toward a different project.
Per Community Development Specialist Olivia Galyon, city staff was requesting approval to use this money to fund the Human Resources Strategic Planning Project which would help “the city to define visions, goals, needs going forward.”
Alderperson Hartzheim had experiences with strategic planning and was not a fan. She wanted to know what the $45,000 would get the city and was concerned putting the money toward this was not the best way to use the funds.
Human Resources Director Jay Ratchman responded, “As you know with the Comprehensive Plan it’s important from an organizational standpoint to make sure that what we’re doing aligns, that we’re not headed in a different direction internally from the bigger plan. The last time that we’ve updated our strategic plan was 2019. So, the goal here is actually to create efficiency by doing this now, so that we can piggyback off the comprehensive plan, that development process, to use data that’s being collected and to use it so to maximize and not have to repeat what’s being collected. A lot of key stakeholders are going to already be part of the comprehensive plan. We can use that data and make sure that we’re realigning from a strategic standpoint internally.”
Alderperson Hartzheim pointed out the city already had a mission, vision, guiding beliefs, and core values.
Director Ratchman answered, “That is correct, and this is to, as part of the overall plan, to make sure that we’re revisiting that vision, core values. But also, it goes deeper than that. It starts at the top, but then funnels down to what are the strategic key priorities of the organization, and once again, making sure that we’re going back to that guiding document, which is the comprehensive plan.”
Alderperson Chris Croatt (District 14) asked if they would be doing this project if they did not have ARPA dollars to fund it. Director Ratchman indicated that it was important enough that they would be looking to fund it from some other source if they could not use ARPA dollars for it.
Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) asked if $45,000 would be enough to get what they needed.
Director Ratchman was not certain; however, “I’m confident in that from the standpoint of we’re not starting from scratch; we are going to be piggybacking off of the Comprehensive Plan, which is going to collect a lot of data. So, I—that should be a large expense that we should be able to avoid, and we just have to drill deeper—other key stakeholders, like employees and bringing our leadership team together. So, if not, we will have to come back and talk about it, but when we talked about it, we believe that that amount should get us where we need to be.”
Alderperson Hartzheim felt that this should have been part of the Comprehensive plan budgeting in the first place. “It just feels unpolished to me, and I’m very unsure about it, and I intend to vote “no” today, but that does not mean that I can’t be talked into it prior to full Council. I just am very skeptical about the taxpayer value that comes from this $45,000 in a strategic plan initiative in this regard.”
Alderperson Croatt shared some of Alderperson Hartzheim’s concerns, but, “I think it’s great that we have this opportunity to have this money, and if there’s an identified need, that’s the reason why I’m gonna vote for it.”
The committee voted 3-1 to approve the recommendation.
[In all honesty, even after having read the memo and listened to the committee meeting, I still have no idea what spending $45,000 on a strategic plan project is going to do for the city and how it differs from the overall Comprehensive Plan. It seems like a city should be focused on providing quality customer service, keeping taxes as low, and adequately carrying out the responsibilities of cities as laid out in Chapter 62 of Wisconsin’s State Statutes. I don’t understand what kind of vision is necessary beyond that.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1214266&GUID=3B187F72-EAE6-43FA-A9AF-98CE459957F9
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