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12/11/2018 03:04 PMLow public turnout for two recent public input sessions regarding the town’s effort to build a 10-year strategic plan bothered some elected officials and prompted some to speak out in the days that followed. In response to the criticism, Republican officials have made a recent point to acknowledge that while turnout was low, there will be plenty more opportunities for public input and that unconstructive criticism isn’t helpful.
The 10-year strategic plan is intended to help to guide all of the needs of the town for the next decade or more. Beyond just analyzing budgetary and capital needs, the town hopes to look at issues as far-ranging as protecting environmental assets and preparing for changing demographics.
The plan is an initiative of the Board of Selectmen (BOS), but the Board of Finance (BOF) and Board of Education (BOE), along with town department heads and key community stakeholders, are expected to be involved in the process. The BOS began the process began in early 2018 when it put out a request for proposals to companies that would help guide the town through development of the plan.
Three proposals came in and then two members of the BOS and BOF sat on a selection subcommittee to select a firm. The subcommittee selected Management Partners and the contract was awarded in late June.
Representatives from Management Partners held two public input sessions on Nov. 27. The sessions were originally supposed to be a week apart, but a freak snowstorm in mid-November canceled the first workshop. Just a handful of residents joined the many elected officials attending the sessions.
People were asked to move around multiple tables and give their thoughts on topics like the town’s weaknesses, assets the town already has that could be built upon, and participants’ visions for the future of the town. Answers jotted down by participants were wide-ranging, but some answers involving the schools and the need for economic sustainability were common themes.
At the BOS meeting on Dec. 10, board members reviewed what comes next in the process. The consultant is scheduled to return to town for two meetings this week with elected officials and department heads to gather more input and review findings thus far.
“They [the consultants] are going to give a summary of the town, they are going to give a summary of the findings from the one-on-one interviews, a summary of their findings from the two community input sessions and the community input survey, and then they are going to give the BOS some pointers on how to move forward with creating a draft document,” said Town Executive Assistant Lauren Rhines. “After the workshop on Thursday ...they are going to create a draft document to submit to the BOS.”
Selectman Bruce Wilson also asked Rhines to review the communications the town used to publicize the recent public input sessions. He referenced a recent article in this paper (“Madison Strategic Plan Process Continues,” Dec. 6) in which BOF member Bennet Pudlin criticized the process and Wilson said he wanted to make it clear that the town did properly notice the events.
“The community input sessions were initially scheduled for Nov. 15 and Nov. 27,” said Rhines. “Legal notices were posted in the New Haven Register and The Source, they were put on the website, they were sent out through the e-subscriber list, they were published on the First Selectman’s Facebook page, and they were published on the Town of Madison’s Facebook page as well as some of the other town departments’ Facebook pages.”
Wilson said he is comfortable that the town took a lot of steps to notice the event and said the public will have more opportunities to get involved as the process continues.
“There will be many more times for the public to participate in the process and what we are really trying to do at this stage is take ideas and transform a blank page into something that people can then discuss and react to,” he said. “While we are not getting a lot of public input right now, as we begin to public our working drafts, I am sure we will awaken different perspectives and different viewpoints as people begin to realize that maybe their perspective is missing or something.”
The plan itself and how the process rolled out over the summer pitted Democrats against Republicans and at one point in August led to a shouting match at a BOF meeting. Wilson said there will be plenty more opportunities going forward for officials and residents to debate the substance of the plan, but said he doesn’t find questioning the validity of the process very helpful right now.
“While this doesn’t feel like a very robust process right now, it is and will become even more robust,” he said. “I would ask everyone in the community to please come out when we invite you to come out, because we always want that, but also to have faith that as a process, this is moving along right where it should be and we will be having lots of very good and maybe even heated discussions about where we want to go as a community...I have personal faith that we will arrive at a plan that we can all feel comfortable in describing in what Madison’s future is going to be.”