Focusing on the next five years

Council, administration to begin work on new strategic plan

Perry Village Council members and administrators have been asked to do some thinking until early next month.

Perry Village Council members and administrators have been asked to do some long-term thinking from now until early next month.

That’s because the community’s government leaders are preparing for an Oct. 8 work session to kick off the creation of a new five-year strategic plan. Councilwoman Jean Schonauer encouraged her colleagues to arrive at the 6 p.m. work session with ideas about what to include in the document.

“We’re coming to the end of our (current) five-year strategic plan and need to start it all over again,” Schonauer said, during the Sept. 10 Village Council meeting.

However, Schonauer said the exercise should be less laborious than it was to develop the village’s inaugural strategic plan, which covers the years of 2016 through 2020.

“The good news is we’re not going to do it like we did before because that was the initial setting up of the plan,” she said. “So now it’s just a matter of taking what we did in the first five years and moving forward into the next five years.”

Schonauer distributed copies of the current five-year strategic plan to two members of council who were not involved in establishing the original document. Councilman Buddy Semple was elected in November 2019 and began serving in January, while Elias Coss was sworn in on Aug. 27 to fill the unexpired term of

Devin DiSantis, who resigned in June. For all of the other council members and administrators, she handed out or promised to email a list of goals that the village government leaders had previously set out to accomplish in 2020.

Perry Village government leaders can take time prior to the Oct. 8 work session to review the information that Schonauer provided.

“Look it over, digest it and consider what you think should be our priorities for the next five years,” she said.

Councilman Phil Cassella said the five-year strategic plan also is a useful tool in producing Perry’s annual State of the Village report.

For each the past four years, Perry Village has produced an annual report highlighting accomplishments of the year that just ended and goals for the coming year. The next State of the Village report will focus on achievements from 2020 and goals for 2021.

The annual report looks at activities in seven different service categories: Government

and Workforce Development; Police Department; Public Works Department; Finance; Parks & Recreation — Community Activities; Economic Development — Planning Commission and Zoning Department; and Communications.

“So it’s kind of look back, and add to, what our proposals were (for this year), and look ahead,” Cassella said as Perry Village leaders prepare to start working on the strategic plan for 2021 through 2025, as well as the 2020 State of the Village report.