Natick COA subcommittee finalizes 2026–2029 strategic-plan draft, sets follow-up steps

The Town of Natick Council on Aging Board Strategic Planning Subcommittee finalized the draft of its 2026–2029 strategic plan and approved several related objectives during a Jan. 30, 2026, Zoom meeting, members recorded in the meeting minutes.

The decision matters because the strategic plan will guide Council on Aging (COA) priorities — including volunteer engagement and programming — for the next three years. The subcommittee also began drafting an Advocacy goal and set concrete next steps for document management to ensure the committee works from the most current drafts.

Members listed as attendees were Committee member Jim Fitzgerald, Committee member Paula Panchuck and Committee member Jan Sewell. The minutes state the meeting was called to order at 2:00 p.m. and adjourned at 3:30 p.m. The record shows the subcommittee finalized a volunteering objective spreadsheet and a strategic-planning objective spreadsheet, and that programming objectives were finalized with Jan Sewell committing to transfer them to the shared spreadsheet.

The subcommittee opened an initial discussion of an Advocacy goal and identified possible advocacy areas at three levels: internal (for example, creating liaisons from the Board to staff), Town-level and State-level advocacy. Members agreed to prepare a draft Advocacy goal for the next meeting.

To ensure consistent document versions, the minutes record that Jan Sewell and Paula Panchuck will send their most recent drafts to Jim Fitzgerald, and that Fitzgerald will create a separate folder on the shared drive for Strategic Planning materials. The subcommittee scheduled its next meeting for Friday, Feb. 27, 2026, at 2:00 p.m. via Zoom.

The meeting minutes were respectfully submitted by Jeanette Sewell, identified in the record as a COA Strategic Planning Subcommittee member.