Hello everyone,
Council training started with our swearing of the oaths on November 18th followed by the start of a council orientation process. Orientation continued through our regular meeting of November 25th and will continue through various means over the next several months.
On Nov 28th and 29th, Council continued orientation and training with Dr Gordon Mcintosh. He has 40 years of Local government management experience, including educator and consultancy roles. He provides governance, strategic and leadership services and has conducted 1,300 workshops involving 140,000 people. The first morning had the entire town staff meet with Dr Mcintosh to better understand their operational roles, responsibilities and current work programs.
In the afternoon of November 28th, Council joined the staff for lunch and follow up with what they had learned. The rest of the day and the following day consisted of council going through proper governance training, decision making processes, conflicts of interest training and priority setting techniques. The afternoon lunch was great for all of council and town staff to meet and get to know one another. One thing was clear, we have a great bunch of people in both operations and administration. While there is still more training to do, we have a great core to build on with lots of enthusiasm and good team chemistry which are keys for success in any business.
For the governance portion, we not only touched on The Municipalities Act, Gordon went through what is not just black and white but also what is in the grey area. What I mean is things that fall into the “in between” the legislation and reality. We had great discussions on different scenarios and what are true conflicts of interest versus what can be perceived as conflicts of interest. Council has a great starting point, and we will continue to follow through with ongoing training. We then got into setting what council’s priorities are going forward for the next 4 years. This was looking at all aspects of the town, from infrastructure to housing, recreation and culture to programming and economic development. We then moved into strategic planning on all the target areas we set, and this will give us direction going forward. We went through each item in detail and from this we will build detailed strategic priorities going forward.
This is the first time since I have been on council that we have taken this approach, which was a great team building exercise and gets us all on the same page – from Council to Administration. I know I can speak for all of council in saying this was time well spent.
Stay tuned as we build the long-term goals and plans for our great community and everyone that calls Lanigan home now and in the future.
Kind regards,
- Mayor Tony Mycock