Select Board hears strategic-plan monitoring process; committee introduces dashboard and vetting tool

The Eastham Select Board received an update on July 6 from the strategic planning committee’s presenter (S8) about how the town will track and update its five-year strategic plan.

The presenter said the plan contains three guiding principles, six goals and 17 strategic focus areas and that the committee has reorganized to focus on monitoring implementation. "We have a tracking application that Jackie O'Rourke put together," the presenter said, describing a live dashboard that committee members and staff will use to run quarterly reports and flag high-priority items.

The committee described a priority-ranking rubric (worksheet) to vet new action items and said the Climate Action Committee is serving as a pilot to test the vetting and dashboard process. Committee members said the tool allows them to track items’ status (not started, in process, completed) and to surface dependencies, grant deliverables and items required by law that should be fast-tracked.

Board members discussed how often they want updates and asked for concise summaries or dashboard views rather than the full task list. Several members suggested biannual or quarterly high-level reports tied to the board’s goal-setting and the budget cycle; others asked that strategic-plan items be cross-referenced in regular topic updates (for example, housing and public health presentations).

The presenter said the committee will coordinate timing so strategic-plan updates dovetail with goal setting in June and the budget process in December and will provide reports as needed. The board did not vote on plan content at this meeting; the discussion centered on monitoring cadence, reporting format and the committee’s role in vetting and recommending additions or deletions to the plan.