 Item number 10, Item 10, Approval of the El Paso County 2022-2023 Strategic Plan, Brett Waters, County Administrator, Jeff Eckhart, Executive Director, Digital Strategy and Technology Department. Good morning, commissioners. As Kenny said, Jeff Eckhart, Executive Director of DST, wanted to come back and since our informal discussions of the strategic plan in May, give you a few updates of what's happened in the interim, starting with a presentation to the non-board elected officials that included the sheriff, the DA and the clerk back in July. We had a presentation to the citizen's outreach group yesterday for their comment and feedback, and today we're here to request your formal adoption. Before we go through the plan one last time, I wanted to take just a moment to recognize first of all Brett Waters and his unwavering sponsorship. We were just started off this plan when he came on board and he jumped in with both feet and has been a great supporter. So thank you, Brett, for that. Behind me today is the strategy planning team, and these folks have met all through the winter and spring and summer and cleared their calendars. They're all, most of them are executive directors also. So I just wanted to call out Crystal LaTeer from Economic Development, Pete Carey from Justice Services, Stacy Quiddick from Human Services, my deputy Joe Palmer, Nikki Simmons, our CFO. Of course, Kenny Hodges was on that team before transitioning off to the county attorney's office, and then Jim Shields, who was our consultant and facilitator. I just wanted to also give a special call out to Joe Palmer for his leadership in providing a framework for us, and then of course, Jim Shields and all the outside expertise that he gave us. So like we did in the informal meeting, Brett and I are going to tag team this. Brett is our sponsor, so it's important that you hear from him and let you know how he feels about the plan. So Brett, let's get started. At the strategic plan up on the screen, let's go ahead and reconvene. Good morning, commissioners, Brett Waters, county administrators. Real honored to visit with you about our strategic planning process. We visited with you previously, and it's really a team effort. As we've discussed previously, our strategic plan really is the primary filter for how we're going to make decisions in the years to come. One of the things that we've all struggled with, at least I have in years past with other organizations is strategic plans often remain somewhat stale. Once you do it for a year or two, they may end up on the shelf and they lack flexibility. And so we've built in a flexible framework, and so we'll continue to adapt. Things are going to change, and so we want to make sure we adapt to those changes. Big part of a strategic plan is accountability. And so we'll have a public facing dashboard with performance indicators to keep us on track and to make sure there's accountability and that we're making progress. We've, as Jeff talked about, we've talked to the county-wide elected officials who are excited to engage with this on the strategic planning process, clearly some of the bigger organizations already have strategic plans, but there are some clear intersections between our plans that we can work with, and then we'll connect our annual budget and our performance plans. Can you slide that page up? Thank you. So this is the framework that we'll be using on an annual basis. And what I want to emphasize here, as I did before, is this is a flexible framework. We're going to be doing planning in one-year intervals so that we can account for and adjust to rapid changes in our environment. Things like the auto canyon fire, things like floods, things like pandemics where if you've got a binder and a plan that sits on a shelf and it's got a four-year shelf life, you just don't have the ability to pivot the organization for those. So we start with a set of three to five-year fundamentals that includes our principles, our vision, our purpose, and our values. That work is all done. We'll be sharing that with you momentarily. From that step, we move into annual objectives. These are the three to five vital things that we must do every year and do them well. If everything is important, nothing is important. So what are the things that we must laser focus on and make sure that we're accomplishing? And if the annual objective is a destination that we want to get to, our key results tell us the progress that we're making. Are we making progress towards that? Are we coming up short? Do we need to make changes? And so key results are very important in helping us track the progress of our overall objective. From that, we move into the action planning step. These are the specific projects and initiatives that will help us accomplish the annual objectives. That's when we start to push the plan out and involve more folks from outside of just the strategy planning team, but also departments and offices of elected officials. From there, we move into the monthly monitoring stage where Brett will be chairing a monthly monitoring meeting. If he's going to be a great sponsor, then he needs to know that things are happening and that we can report out to him on what that progress looks like. And finally, we can see we'll have a few departments in the first year where they too will adopt the same framework and develop department level strategic plans that help support the overall countywide plan. Some of the core principles we've discussed are number one, we're a low tax county. Our community has clearly stated they prefer low taxes, low costs. But with that said, we also want to provide quality public services and we think we can do both. Is that we essentially have a community that values transparency and we want to continue that tradition with publishing data and analytics. We talked about the dashboard that looks at our overall county, the progress we're making, the condition of our infrastructure while delivering quality public services while continuing to have low taxes in our community. Our vision statement as we propose it is El Paso County will be a trusted regional leader known for excellence and county service delivery. We feel good about that. We've talked a number of times on different visions. We feel and we've talked to use the board about this vision. We feel good about moving forward with that vision. Purpose is we provide essential public services to our to the Pikes Peak region in support of residents, businesses and communities enhancing the freedom for all to thrive. We want to make sure government is assisting residents and their opportunities in El Paso County with the emphasis on its essential public services is what we provide. Core values. We've you've seen some of these values before. I assume some of these are in our previous strategic plan and even with organizations have a number of them. But one of the key points from my perspective is number one is that we are here to serve the public. We are funded through tax taxes in El Paso County and we are here to serve the residents of El Paso County. That is a core value that we have in our organization and in the county. We want to be accountable to the community needs. We want to be collaborative. We understand that we can't do everything alone that we have to work with regional partners to accomplish the goals that we have. We clearly want to be trustworthy. We want the community to trust us to residents to trust us and we want to build that trust and enhance it. And as we've talked about, we want to be transparent. We want to be open and honest, respectful in our work and in our communication. So objectives, again, are as a simple description of a dedicated goal and objective sets a clear path to be undertaken while also providing motivation to get there. The target can be likened to a destination on a map. So our annual objectives this year will have four and you'll hear we'll go through each of those today. But they were developed by this planning team that I spoke of earlier. Each of these objectives has a sponsor who directs and provides oversight for that. And so for three of the four objectives, you're going to hear from that sponsor today and they'll explain why that objective is important to us. We'll follow it up with detailed objective action planning or action plans and that will include members from other offices and departments. We intend for this plan to have a direct and clear linkage to our investments, meaning it's tied to our budgets. It's important for us to do strategically. It's important for us to fund. And in a similar way, our technology investments need to be wrapped around what it is we're trying to accomplish strategically. And finally, every employee in the organization needs to have some kind of link to the strategy. What is my portion or how do I contribute to that? And so with that, we're going to go to the next slide. I'm sorry, not quite yet with key results. Key results are the primary indicator of performance progress. How are we doing? We're going to leverage a nascent but developing data analytics practice. We are going to public or publish public dashboards to track how we're doing. And that could be great stories and that could be not so great stories. So we'll show that organization success is in struggles. And if we're struggling, we'll bring forward ideas on ways that we can close gaps. So key results compel ongoing attention to meeting these tangible targets. Talk to this one. Yeah, that sounds good. Kenny, you want to talk to this one? I'm just joking. Kenny was the was a sponsor on this before the board stole him to be the county attorney, but he was a sponsor real. We will find another sponsor is big shoes to feel, but we'll do that in the near future. This is a big one. Our first objective is infrastructure and really it's an assessment across our infrastructure, including roads, stormwater, facilities, fleet, park assets, and then implementing strategies on how we sustainably fund them that we manage them. And essentially, there's a laser focus on this objective that we're focused on infrastructure, but we need to have a complete and comprehensive inventory of our infrastructure and really condition assessment across the board. We don't want, say, roads assessing differently than stormwater. We want a organization wide, county wide assessment of how we manage and how we inventory and how we assess our infrastructure. A life cycle management strategy is what we want in those five major asset classes. And then again, publishing a public facing asset scorecard that is comprehensive throughout the county. Commissioner Bremmer, I believe has a question. Just a comment, actually, you know, this is, I know that sections of our county government have been able to do this and it is way more difficult than it may seem to be. But I think that what strikes me as you put these five categories out here like this is the overlap that this inevitably will have with other objectives of transparency and fiscal responsibility. Actually, overall strategy vision because once we can get this done, the comprehensive inventory, and really know what we have where we're much more able to show the public what we're doing with their money and with their tax dollars. And we're also probably able to make those go further by being able to quickly apply for grants as they come up. We all know how quickly those federal and state opportunities for grant funding may come up. And if we can be ready to go on a dime, this is something that tangibly helps us be ready to do that at any given point. So I'm pretty excited about it all being organized like that. Thank you, commissioner. Yes, please, if you have a comment. No, I would simply add to that. Yeah, we wanna make sure we're organized, prepared, we're shovel ready with project for federal and state grants. We understand that these dollars are precious and we have limited resources. So we wanna be prepared for those. So thank you for those comments. Great, and just a quick comment from me as well. You've mentioned it already. I'm looking forward to getting into public domain, the different objectives you're starting here with infrastructure and we'll see more. But I also like kind of this connection of a dashboard. You know, these indicators and measures because in my experience, my professional experience, if you're not measuring something, you tend not to act on it. The measures are really helpful to provide insights that allow the senior staff to recognize something and then act on that going forward. So having kind of that embedded into this and we were doing some of it before, but I think this is a lot more focused and a lot more designed to focus on the things that we can change and that we can move. So I really like having this dashboard and these indicators. So I'm looking forward to seeing more of that going down the road. And I think you've got more to follow, more objectives, so please go ahead. Yeah, thank you for that feedback. Okay, we'll turn it over. Lucy, thank you. Thank you. Good morning, commissioners. Stacy Quiddick, Department of Human Services. I'm so pleased to be the sponsor for our second objective, which is improve the quality of county services with a qualified and engaged workforce dedicated to continuous improvement. So there are three primary areas of focus in this objective. Develop resident satisfaction metrics and basically that's to develop a system to gain timely feedback about our public service delivery. We wanna look at employee attrition rates and implement strategies to improve employee retention, which we've already really been focusing on throughout the county. Implement action plans to address the issues that were resend during the employee engagement survey. So we know as public service, public servants were driven to provide top quality services to our residents and we know that the only way to do that is through our amazing staff. And we need to continue to invest in them through training, compensation and other strategies to improve their employment experience, basically helping them recognize how valued they are. Improving the quality of public services directly correlated to the investments made in the workforce. Basically satisfied employees result in satisfied residents. Do you have any questions on that one? Great, I have a comment to that, but I'll reserve that in case other commissioners have a comment. Okay, thank you. I think this is a great objective as well. And in the two years of COVID that we had, it has been tough on employees, it's been really tough. And so that translates to employee retention, you know? So I like the fact that on this objective, we're gonna have a focus on that. I know that we've gotten more intensive already with regard to employee surveys, getting an understanding about what they like about the county working in the county and what some of the challenges are and working with the county. And I think that again is gonna be, right? An indicator and a measure that will allow us to make better decisions going forward to hold on to the most valuable asset we have, which is the team. Absolutely. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Good morning commissioners, Crystal LaTeer, Executive Director of Economic Development here at El Paso County. I'm honored to be the sponsor of Objective Three that is focused on community trust. This one is really focused on community trust by increasing community trust through improved communications and transparencies. Some topics that we've already discussed earlier in the presentation today. Those three key objectives that will be related or those three key results related to this objective will be first, implement external and internal communication strategies through and by December 2023. So as you all know, this is something that we already do here in El Paso County. As we've heard from previous presenters today, this opportunity will allow us to ensure that those communication strategies, both internal and external, are more comprehensive and aligned, and really aligned not only with El Paso County County Administration, but those elected offices. The action planning team that will be working on these key objectives will have representation from other public information offices from elected offices here in the county. So that will really just ensure that we have that aligned communication strategy, both internally and externally. You all are likely aware of many efforts that are already underway here at the county, including new weekly communications internally that we've heard has been, have great success. We've heard as we've moved through that initiative. Second is really to develop a data and analytics practice to inform decisions and publicly track progress towards the performance measures of each of these strategic objectives that you're hearing about today. So County Administrator Waters has shared that and you all have commented on that as well, but this will ensure that there is a dashboard related to each of the four objectives that we're presenting on today and then any objectives in the future. And then lastly, evaluate resident satisfaction with their county experience and develop strategies to continuously improve metrics. So as we all know, we are all dedicated to quality public service. We are public servants to our community and it is important that we have that great communication and feedback loop, so we can continue to improve. Great, any comments on this section? And I'll just, oh, I've got something to say, sorry. I'm really glad that this is one of the objectives because in my experience as a commissioner, I have seen an enormous, enormous amount of great work done by the employees on behalf of the citizens of El Paso County and because that work is done well, it often means there's no controversy connected to it because we're solving problems and getting those issues addressed, but because there's no controversy, it often doesn't get expressed into public domain about what the county is doing. So here we are achieving a bunch of things, delivering great services, providing for the citizens, doing that in a frugal way with the taxpayer dollars and there is a large part of the community that doesn't even know that we're doing those kinds of things. So I think this outreach to the public is a great project for us to do. There's two great things about it. One is for the community to know more about what the county is doing, but I think it's also an opportunity for the community to increase their feedback to us so that we can bend and flex based on what interests we find. So I think this is really important and I think it's something that we can really do a lot better on and achieve, but it's hard, you know, because when you solve problems and there's no controversy, it doesn't seem to rise to kind of community knowledge about it. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning, commissioners. My name is Pete Carey, director of justice services for the fourth objective, which I will be the sponsor for. It deals with health and safety. Develop partnerships to support community efforts to improve the health and safety of residents. I know that's kind of a general comment, but the focus of this will be on coordination and strengthening partnerships in the county. And by my calculations, looking at kind of what's ahead, I think this effort will include economic development, DHS, public health, district attorney's office, the sheriff's office, the courts, justice services, my group, and all of our partners, both public and private. So I'm hopeful about this. It sounds like it's going to be a very, very interesting project to work on. There's already great work being done as it relates to health and safety in El Paso County. I think that the county can play a bigger role in coordinating those efforts and being an active participant. I'm reminded of some of the groups that are already working in areas like this, the criminal justice coordinating council, which Commissioner Geithner is a part of, the region 16 opioid council, which Mr. Hodges started, and we're going to have our second meeting coming up in September. That I guess I inherited from him, right? Yes, sir. And also the district attorney's office has a really highly functioning opioid group. So some of the ones are already working. So we're going to identify and develop strategies and evidence-based practices that affect the health and safety of our community. We're going to develop a way to share this information through public dashboards and through information campaigns. So I'm very, very excited to do that. Thank you. Great, thank you. Any comments or questions on this? And I'll just make also a quick comment on this. We've got some golden nuggets, I think of great performance in this arena, but I think kind of treating this as an overall objective is a great strategic concept because I think there's more we can do. And we've worked a lot on like teen suicide and we're certainly approving an enormous number, record numbers of single-family homes and multifamily developments and things like that. But I think thinking of this kind of strategically as a package will be really interesting. I think we'll find some really interesting things as a result of doing that. So I think it's great to have this as objective for. Yeah, I think coordinating these efforts and just so everybody knows exactly what's happening and what the state of affairs is as far as that public dashboard, I think we'll move it down the line further. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Mrs. Commissioner Williams. Please go ahead. This one is a really good one. So I was just thinking as we've gone through this that I appreciate this one being in there because we've spent two years where it seems like our primary public health focus has been on COVID. And during this time, we have a lot of things going on out in our community that are very, the fentanyl crisis is very harmful to our community and it's harmful throughout the United States. So we have a lot of other things now that COVID has become a permanent part of our lives. I think that we need to turn our focus on including the opioid crisis and fentanyl and public safety. These are the kind of issues I think that we're going to face as our county continues to grow. So thank you for this. Thank you. Yeah. Well, Patricia, we very much appreciate your support. We're excited to move forward with our strategic plan. I think we've got a great team behind me to move this forward with your support and vision. But we appreciate your approval or any other comments or questions you may have, but we appreciate your support. Great. Commissioner Bremmer, did you have some comments or questions? Sure. Can I actually, can I have the team of sponsors behind you stand up? Because I can't see them from this spot. Sorry. You don't have to come forward. It's be comfortable where you are. I just wanted to say, I think this is so well done. So kudos to the entire team who helped facilitate it, who put this together, who put the organizational framework and backbone behind it. I think it's pretty brilliant, first of all, that you have perfectly chosen the sponsors of each of these objectives. Because first of all, I know they're going to get done to the letter of what we've just seen on the screen. And that's incredibly confirming, but Crystal, you embody creating community trust and I've watched you do it over and over and over again. And Stacey, same thing can be said for you for customer service and engagement both within your employee population and with your external clients. It's quite impressive. And Pete, you are Mr. Health and Safety. So I am, I'm excited to see that, you know, I mean, this is the beginning of it. And you three in particular are leading a charge and Kenny on public infrastructure, previously as well. But I think, you know, you, if we're going to talk about a strategic plan, it's wonderful to have words and goals on a paper and it looks wonderful. It sounds wonderful. It sounds exciting. And to see the right people in the right places with the right actual bullet points under all of those objectives, I know that this is gonna get done and it's going to ultimately better serve our citizens. I'm so excited about that. And just kudos to the team. We have a lot of work ahead of us. And I think we have all the right people in all the right places to actually see this get done. And I think our citizens are gonna see, you know, see a redefining of who the county is and how we do work very, very quickly, quicker than any of us could have ever hoped for because of who we have in place. So thank you very much. Great, thank you for those comments. Other comments? This is commissioner Williams. Go ahead. Yeah, I couldn't have said it better than commissioner Bremmer. A wonderful team in place to do this, wonderful objectives. And just knowing that, you know, as we include everyone in the county in the process, and we're trying to be better as a county, this is I think a very flexible plan, very much ability to react to current situations and trends if we do have emergencies. And but it also, I appreciate the transparency and the dashboard. And so the public will know where we're doing what we're working on so that we can be accountable to our taxpayers and our voters as well. Thank you. Thank you commissioner and to commissioner Williams point, you know, we've had strategic plans for the county in the past and we've had goals and objectives and those things. And, you know, the staff and the team has worked on, you know, achieving those things. But this plan has another component that I think is really, really important. And that is your work to connect it to budgets and to do it in an annual way instead of say in a five year or four year kind of process because stuff happens. I mean, you know, in January of 2020, nobody knew that we would have a gigantic pandemic in February of 2020, right? We can have economic up turns and downturns that can really cause challenges for us because of loss of revenue, because of an economic downturn. And that forces us to work really hard on flexibility both within budgets and where we pivot to service, providing service to citizens because things happen and they can sometimes happen very quickly. And my gosh, have we seen that here in the last few years? So this is another part about this plan that I think is very interesting is hooking it to the budgets and kind of reassessing so that we can move those dollars where we need to based on things that happen that might be outside of our control but we can do something about them as a result. So I like the fact that the strategic plan connects to that. Thank you. Mr. Chair, may I move approval of this item? Please, I think it is time for a motion. Please proceed. I would like to move approval of item number 10, the El Paso County 2022-2023 strategic plan. Second. Yeah. All right, that's been moved and seconded. One last opportunity from the commissioners if there's any comments or questions. Yes, please go ahead. Just to make a note, I was remiss, Jeff Eckhart has been really the driver in this strategic plan, him and Joe, but particularly Jeff has a great mind for strategic planning. That's why I was put in his shop before I got here, but thanks, Jeff. I think he's been a great asset, so thank you. Yeah, I think in military parlance that would make you the strat plan director, right? Something like that? So, okay, great. All right, thank you so much. And we have a motion and a second, and I don't think we've got any other comments or questions, so let's proceed with the vote. Commissioner Williams. Aye. Commissioner Gonzalez. Aye. Commissioner Bremmer. Aye. And the chair votes aye. That passes 4-0 with commissioner Geithner excused. Thank you very much for the really hard work that you guys have put into this. I'm looking forward to it helping us produce a lot of success going forward. Thank you very much. All right, thank you very much.