Lane County launches three‑year strategic‑plan update; consultants gather staff and community input

Lane County hosted a joint work session on Feb. 26 with consultants from Moss Adams to begin updating the county's three‑year strategic plan, focusing on foundational statements, a SWOT analysis and follow‑up engagement steps. Moss Adams facilitators led breakout activities and solicited staff and community input that will be used to draft goals and performance measures for board review.

The session opened with introductions from Moss Adams' Annie Rose Favor, who described the firm's approach to public‑sector strategic planning, and Jesse Lenhart, who outlined the process timeline. County senior operational analyst Jeff Kincaid described the county's role supporting the session and noted logistics for the public broadcast. Favor and Lenhart said the update will be iterative: consultants will synthesize today's input, circulate draft language for foundational statements (vision, mission, values and core behaviors) and return for additional review before the board considers adoption.

Consultants presented materials gathered during pre‑work: one‑on‑one interviews with board and management, focus groups with roughly 20 community organization representatives, an employee survey with more than 600 responses and a community survey. Favor and Lenhart said the materials include an initial SWOT (strengths/weaknesses/opportunities/threats) summary and recommended that participants focus on high‑level direction rather than final wording in this session. They also reminded attendees that the session was for input rather than decision‑making.

Participants worked in pairs rotating through station exercises to rate and annotate the vision and mission statements, core behaviors and strategic lenses. Common themes the facilitators noted for revision included shortening language for memorability, rephrasing or removing competitive terms such as "best," bringing service‑delivery language forward in the mission, separating equity and respect as distinct values, and making strategic lenses more operational (for example, by producing an equity toolkit). Favor and Lenhart said the consultants will incorporate that feedback into draft language to share before the next joint session in March.

Ending: The consultants said they would deliver a full PowerPoint and the written survey and focus‑group results after the session, and that the next joint work session and draft circulation will follow in the coming month. The public webcast continued in recorded form after an in‑room Channel 21 outage was noted during the session.