Town Administrator May 26, 2020
Board RetreatJulia Novak from the
Novak Consulting Group facilitated a two-day Board retreat on Friday and Saturday, May 15/16. Mayor Jennifer Carroll and Trustees were joined by Deputy Town Administrator, Farrell Buller, and myself. Normally, Department Directors would also attend the retreat, but to comply with the 10-person limit on gatherings due to COVID-19, the directors attended via Zoom.
The goals for the retreat were to establish a foundation for effective governance and to identify top priorities. To explore the issue of effective governance, Ms Novak asked the Board to consider several questions, including: What does good governance look like to you? What values are important to you in governing? What is important to remember when your position is the prevailing decision, and what is important to remember when your position is not the prevailing decision?
To help identify top priorities, Ms Novak also asked the Board to identify “What is true about Erie today that you hope will still be true in ten years?” and “What is not true about Erie today that you hope will be true in ten years?” Using the Board’s responses to those questions, and through a series of other exercises, Ms Novak facilitated the Board’s work to identify nine key areas on which to focus, and to evaluate the roughly 50 Work Plan issues to confirm they should remain top priorities on which to focus Town resources.
You can see the Board’s key focus areas, summaries of responses to Ms Novak’s questions, and other details of the retreat in
this report.