January 18, 2021
We are writing to provide you, the Lakeside community, with an update on the progress made over the last four weeks toward our strategic planning initiative.
The boards, staff and Strategic Planning Committee want to thank all who responded to our invitation for community input. Thank you to the nearly 800 Lakesiders who completed the strategic planning survey, focused on the 12 key areas of Lakeside’s purpose and operations. Long-time Lakesider Cindy Grimm and our Marketing team are currently working on summarizing and organizing the raw input in a form that can be used by the 12 Working Groups to focus their discussions.
The survey results presented a wide spectrum of views and suggestions and many, many nuggets of knowledge that will be the foundation of our bottom-up, community driven, planning process. The kick-off and information session for working group leaders is planned for the last week of January.
Each Working Group now has a confirmed discussion leader, consisting primarily of respected non-board and non-staff members of the community. Each group of 8-10 members will begin meeting by the first of February, with work to be completed by the beginning of April. Recruiting of working group members has begun, and each group will be mainly comprised of community members: residents, visitors and business owners. We hope to have at least 100 people from the community involved in these initial discussions. They have stepped forward from Daniel Roger’s summer listening tour, the recent survey and suggestions from the strategic planning committee and working group leaders.
The data gained from our survey will be provided to each Working Group in January and will form the basis of their discussion and examination of each area of focus, together with other pre-existing work done by the board committees, staff and the Master Plan. The recommendations and observations of each group will be reviewed and approved by the Board in April-May of 2021 and crafted into Lakeside’s Strategic Plan. The Strategic Plan, once approved, will be presented to the community in the spring of 2021 and given to Daniel Rogers and the Management team to begin the process of writing the first-year Operational Plan. The Operational Plan is typically a one-year plan with very specific and measurable actions and goals needed to achieve progress toward implementing the Strategic Plan’s long-term initiatives.
Throughout this process, look for regular monthly updates. We want all Lakesiders to have input into this process and follow along our progress. Updates will also be added to our website at www.lakesideohio.com/lakesideplan.
Thank you for taking the survey and, more importantly, allowing us to respond in real time to what we’re learning from you.
Till we meet again in Lakeside.
