Online Town Hall

As many of you are aware, City Council, senior city staff and the community at large have been involved in refining our community strategic plan. Given the number of business ventures I have been involved in, I am a big fan of strategic planning. As far as I am concerned it is the equivalent of pulling out a road map at the beginning of a journey. (Whether the trip is long or short we really need to know where we are going)

Our previous strategic plan and vision statement were pretty straightforward, ”A Great Place to Call Home” Secure jobs, safe communities, good transportation and available housing… all reasonable goals for sure.

However as far as a vision for what Guelph could be, I felt that it was sorely lacking. As far as I am concerned, these are the kinds of things that we as a community should expect as a foregone conclusion. Guelph already IS a great place to call home…it’s not a vision; it is a statement of fact!

Guelph has a long history of innovation and leadership, our vision statement and resulting strategic plan needs to capture this quality and leverage it; not just state the obvious.

During the first strategic planning meeting, the issue of Canada’s failure to meet the Kyoto protocol came up, and then it occurred to me… perhaps the solution starts with one. As a community we are small enough to make significant changes in how we operate and yet large enough that these changes could have far reaching impacts. Why couldn’t Guelph honour the Kyoto protocol and set the stage for other communities to follow?

And so began an entirely different discussion about our strategic direction.

Perhaps we can solve our own problems and issues in a manner that sets an example that other communities can learn from and aspire to. Perhaps Guelph can become, “The City That Makes a Difference”

Lofty aspirations? …you bet, but it sure sounds like the Guelph I know.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 at 9:13 am and is filed under Community Development, Economic Development, Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.