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Executive committee narrows budget 'strategic lenses', prioritizes community health and staff well-being
Summary
Using a buckets-and-coins exercise, the Dunn County Executive Committee prioritized four strategic "lenses" to guide budget trade-offs: community health and well-being, protecting county assets, "fix it now, pay later," and staff well-being; members discussed a dedicated workshop to finalize lenses.
The Dunn County Executive Committee spent a substantive portion of its May 13 meeting on an exercise to identify strategic "lenses" that will guide budget trade-offs during the upcoming cycle.
Staff presented three options for setting the lenses: pause for a full workshop, proceed with the nine starting lenses in the packet and narrow them here, or adopt none. Garrett Zastebel, a UW Extension consultant working with staff, described a "values house" exercise and proposed a coin-and-bucket method to surface priorities.
Garrett Zastebel (UW Extension) asked whether the committee wanted the full county board involved or preferred the executive committee develop lenses and bring them forward. He described the exercise: committee members would place four coins (votes) across buckets representing candidate lenses; buckets with the most coins indicate higher priority.
Committee members debated scope and labeling (one member criticized a "vulnerability protection" label as phrased), proposed adding a staff well-being lens, and discussed whether constitutional-mandate services should be treated separately from discretionary priorities. After the bucket exercise, staff reported results: community health and well-being received the most votes, followed by protecting county assets, "fix it now, pay later," and staff well-being.
Members discussed taking the four prioritized lenses to the full board for a similar exercise or holding a dedicated workshop with the executive committee to refine the lenses before County Board consideration; staff agreed to poll members to schedule additional time.
Why it matters
The lenses are intended to frame committee- and board-level trade-offs during budget development (what services to protect, what to prioritize for potential cuts or investment). Several supervisors emphasized clear messaging and community engagement ahead of the budget workshop.
Key transcript quote
Garrett Zastebel: "What I had envisioned and shared with Jenna was what's known as a values house exercise..."
