Morrow County commissioners narrow values, adjust priorities in draft strategic plan

Morrow County commissioners used a work session to edit a draft strategic plan, agreeing to narrow the draft values and to emphasize community development over an explicit county role in recruiting businesses.

The session opened with County Administrator Matt Johnson presenting a summary of a draft strategic plan based on a recent retreat and public outreach. "The board of commissioners is the final determiner of the strategic plan," Johnson said, asking the board to review the mission, vision, values and five strategic priorities before staff fleshes out implementation steps.

Commissioners converged on a reduced set of values. After discussion and wordsmithing, the board agreed to four values: resiliency, integrity, collaboration and transparency. Commissioner Dave said he liked "resiliency, integrity, collaboration, and transparency," and commissioners signaled broad support for that set.

The board also discussed the plan's five strategic priorities, originally listed as community and economic development, governance, infrastructure, water and employees. Commissioners expressed concern that an explicit "economic development" line might be read as directing the county to recruit businesses or take on roles already handled by local partners such as the Port of Morrow.

"My view is that the county's role in economic development is creating policies and procedures that's conducive to businesses getting here," Commissioner Jeff said, adding that the county should avoid duplicating work done by the port or other entities. After a brief vote-for-consensus, the commissioners directed staff to relabel that priority as community development while retaining economic opportunity as a component of that work.

Under community development, commissioners discussed specific initiatives staff had listed: expanding tourism options, supporting cities with infrastructure and development, increasing workforce housing, improving access to tax deferrals and grants, validating impacts of existing county support programs, and encouraging business formation. Commissioners clarified that "support" could mean in-kind staff assistance (for example, grant-writing or planning help) rather than direct cash transfers, and asked staff to identify funding sources and tradeoffs where money is proposed.

Water, infrastructure and health-care access were singled out for clearer wording. On health care, commissioners debated whether to frame the priority as "improve access to health care" or the more modest "maintain access to health care" given funding uncertainties for some state and federal programs. Commissioners asked staff to include measurable subtasks (for example, public transit support, partnerships with community health groups, and grant-seeking) under that priority.

On workforce and employees, the board supported expanding internship and career-path partnerships with local schools and workforce programs. Lisa Mittelstorf, a county staff member, offered to arrange a presentation by Anna Brown, identified in the meeting as a workforce development director, about high-school and college internship pipelines; the board suggested a tentative date of Sept. 17 for that presentation.

Johnson said staff and consultant Matt Dixon will finalize the draft and return it for formal adoption at the board's first September meeting, together with the capital improvement plan. "Once you get that, we will bring it back to have you adopted," Johnson said.

Next steps the commissioners directed staff to pursue include: producing a final, publishable draft; defining which initiatives will require new funding versus in-kind support; developing measurable indicators for programs the county supports; and scheduling the workforce-development presentation and the September adoption item.

The work session ended with the board directing staff to refine language on values and priorities and to present a final draft for adoption in September.