Have a plan, work the plan.
Have a plan: Bring stakeholders together to determine your vision for the future, and what it will take to achieve that vision. Work the plan: Bring to life the goals and objectives that make up your plan, delivering on the collective vision for a more promising future.
We are doing it with our 2035 Comprehensive and Downtown Plan, and we will do it with the Oak Creek Watershed restoration plan. Now, I’m proud to say we’re employing this strategy in city government with our first strategic plan in decades, maybe ever.
After months of discussions with the common council and our department heads and employees – including a full-day planning retreat last fall – we consider this our mission and vision …
- Our mission: Our mission is to deliver exceptional city services to ensure a high quality of life and enable growth.
- Our vision is to be the desirable South Shore community where people want to live, work, visit, and invest.
And here is how we will get there — the five priorities where we feel we need to spend our time, and taxpayer money, as your city government …
- Accelerate Economic Development: South Milwaukee is recognized as a premier community along Lake Michigan by fostering an entrepreneurial spirit, developing and retaining a diverse mix of employees & employment opportunities, and maintaining beauty in the built environment.
- Strategically Invest, Improve, and Maintain Public Infrastructure/Facilities: South Milwaukee has a safe and effective infrastructure that provides a framework for optimal community enjoyment.
- Enhance the Effectiveness of External Processes: South Milwaukee is high-performing, efficient, effective and known for its service excellence.
- Enhance the Effectiveness of Internal Processes: South Milwaukee is high-performing, efficient, effective and known for its service excellence.
- Provide a Safe, Secure, and Health Community: South Milwaukee is recognized as a community that provides exceptional public safety services.
Check out a draft plan summary here. And here is the feedback form.
We welcome your feedback. Did we get it right? Let us know.
We will emerge from this process with a shared vision for city government, and then use the plan as a foundation for our employees, upon which they will build their own goals and objectives, making it part of a performance culture at the city.
Will this be perfect? No. Will we have to regularly refine our plan to adapt to changing realities and city needs? Absolutely. But as novelist Andy Weir says: “A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” I hope you agree this is a really good plan, one long overdue.
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