Strategic Long-Range Planning Becomes A Campaign Issue—

Newtown’s Efforts To Plan Its Future Reach Back Decades

By John Voket

(This is the first of a series of stories examining Newtown’s efforts at strategic long-term planning.)

Strategic long-range planning.

From the perspective of Newtown officials who say they have been doing it for decades, the practice helps ensure Newtown’s children can grow up in a community they would be proud to live in as adults.

For some political candidates this year, long-range strategic planning has become rallying cry, fraught with criticisms that Newtown is either not doing it, or approaching it in either an unorganized or ineffective fashion.

Last week, five letters to the editor from Independent Party of Newtown representatives or candidates make reference to the town’s need to either take up or substantially change its long-range strategic planning practices. Several IPN representatives have also written or suggested through the political group’s platform that a long-range planning process should drive the five-year charter-mandated capital improvement process.

Legislative Council Representative Po Murray, who is seeking reelection with the IPN in November, points out, “Current members of IPN recommended a long-term planning process to guide the CIP decisions back in 2006, but it was to no avail.”

The IPN chairman and its candidate for first selectman, Bruce Walczak says, “It’s time someone demonstrated leadership on the issue of planning for our longer-term future. An IPN-led Board of Selectman and Legislative Council will ensure that a strategic long-range planning process will be put in place.”

And his running mate, selectman candidate William Furrier, suggests the town should open up the process for public input. “Our citizens need to be part of planning for our future.” Even William Hart, an IPN school board candidate, weighed in on the subject, saying: “The quality of the town’s and the school district’s Capital Improvement Plan [CIP] process is severely hurt by the lack of a strategic long-range plan for the town.”

Google the phrase “long-range strategic planning for municipalities,” however, and among the first few results is a link to Newtown, Conn.

Do the two concepts — long-range and strategic — belong in the same category? Are there distinctions between long-range and strategic planning? Various definitions scattered across the Internet suggest that long-range planning is usually considered to assume present knowledge about future conditions. It looks to make certain the plan’s exact results over the period of its implementation. Strategic planning, however, focuses on an organization’s ability to respond to a dynamic, changing environment, which may require changes in the future. An emphasis is given to making decisions that will ensure an organization’s ability to successfully respond to changes in the environment.

Long-range planning capitalizes on predictability, while strategic planning capitalizes on adaptability.

As Newtown’s community development director, Elizabeth Stocker does not have a direct stake in this year’s election, but she has been following the debate closely. She believes Newtown has been effectively utilizing aspects of both long-range and strategic planning for decades. Recognizing that these seemingly interchangeable concepts have risen to prominence in local political campaigns, Ms Stocker did some research of her own.

Planning and Politics

The community development director suggested that Newtown’s established long-rang and strategic initiatives have been, and should continue to yield, positive results for the community. But she cautioned the ongoing practices might best serve the community if they remain apolitical.

“Newtown has been proactive in long-term planning long before I came to work here in 1990,” Ms Stocker told The Bee this week. “In fact, Newtown’s first land use plan was introduced around 1970.”

Ms Stocker, who also maintains affiliations with both state and national municipal planning associations, said Newtown apparently realized a need to establish long-rang planning even earlier. She said according to documentation in her office, Newtown officials commissioned a community action plan through a regional council of governments (COG) in the late 1950s or early 60s.

Ms Stocker said she came to work in Newtown as the community was engaged in updating its original 1981 plan for conservation and development, a process that continues regularly about every ten years according to the local land use office.

Furthermore, Ms Stocker said, the town’s economic development commission was formed and charged by local ordinance to create a strategic plan outlining possible future development courses, and published its first report in 1992. That document was adopted that year by Newtown’s Legislative Council, and updated by the EDC in 1999, and again in 2005.

Around that time, the Newtown Police Department also began taking on the challenge of long-term planning. Chief Michael Kehoe said he personally requested Board of Finance Chair John Kortze to appear before the local Police Commission to detail how the department could successfully integrate its long-term plan to ensure the town and taxpayers would be able to afford it once those plans began to take definitive shape years down the road.

“I called Mr Kortze to come to the Police Commission, to explain to us how we could bring long-range projects to fruition,” Chief Kehoe said. “And he spent quite a bit of time taking us through the process from soup to nuts.”

Chief Kehoe referenced the long-term concept of either affecting significant expansion and improvements to the existing police facility on Main Street, or possibly a brand-new facility some time in the future.

“As far back as 2001, we had a police facility project in the Capital Improvement Plan,” Chief Kehoe said. “But besides that, the police commission became engaged in [other aspects of] long-range planning beginning in the summer of 2006.”

In February of that year, Po Murray and others involved in discussions on projecting high school space needs were pushing for a broader planning effort, including a “strategic plan beyond the five-year Capital Improvement Plan…”

By April 2006, the Board of Selectmen also began considering a proposal to form an ad-hoc committee that would become involved in municipal strategic planning, and when appropriate, vetting of capital projects as far out as 20 years or more. First Selectman Herb Rosenthal, who was unseated in the 2007 local elections and is now a member of the Board of Selectmen, suggested a nonpolicy making, ad-hoc group of possibly as many as 15 citizens who would bring individual talents and expertise to the fore.

It was Mr Rosenthal’s hope at the time that members of a Strategic Long-Range Planning Commission would serve as a liaisons between members of the public, special interest groups and town agencies, and the Board of Selectmen in determining the need, scope, and cost of possible capital projects and initiatives beyond the scope of the town’s five-year Capital Improvement Plan (CIP).

A Growing Trend

At the time, Mr Rosenthal acknowledged that such committees were still rare, but a growing trend among communities whose political leaders may be too engaged in day-to-day business.

Mr Rosenthal said while Connecticut communities are at a significant advantage having capital improvement plans like Newtown, and are bound by state law to engage updates of their Plans of Conservation and Development every ten years, those initiatives have a somewhat narrower focus.

“A long-range strategic plan is, by its nature, more concerned with financial impact,” Mr Rosenthal said. “With all the issues beyond the range of the CIP involving our schools, especially the likelihood of significant improvements occurring at the middle school, and the needs of our Cultural Arts Commission, our seniors, our Parks and Recreation Department, possible construction of new pools, even a community or recreation center, we should have a formal group that can work with the Board of Finance and report to the Legislative Council.”

That committee was eventually formed, conducted meetings, fact-finding and interviews, and completed its charge, turning its findings over to Joe Borst after he defeated Mr Rosenthal to become first selectman in 2007.

Several public officials, including former volunteers on that first strategic long-range planning committee, have expressed growing concerns about the practice of some candidates to freely interchange long-range and capital improvement planning in their political campaigning.

Mr Kortze, speaking on behalf of the finance board that reviews and recommends the annual Capital Improvement Plan to the local council, believes it is a mistake to illustrate or discuss the CIP and a long-range plan as interchangeable concepts.

The finance chair also recalled sitting before the Legislative Council nearly three years ago requesting the council pick up the long-range and strategic planning initiative as the ad-hoc committee was in the final stages of completing its charge.

The next segment in this series will examine the ways in which a long-range municipal strategic plan may complement or enhance the effectiveness of capital improvement budgeting.