By KIRSTEN LASKEY
Los Alamos Daily Post
kirsten@ladailypost.com

Los Alamos County Council routinely reviews, modifies and approves a list of strategic priorities but this year something new was introduced.

During the special session Tuesday night, Deputy County Manager Anne Laurent introduced councilors to a proposed public dashboard that will track the 2023 strategic priorities and identify the progress being made toward reaching these priorities.

“In conjunction with our new website we have been looking at how to also at the same time implement a public dashboard that would go live with that new website this year,” she said. “There’s lots of examples on how to do that, so staff have been looking at them and how might we translate some of our plans into the dashboard and update them more often and make them more visible on the website.”

Laurent showed some examples of other municipalities’ dashboards but did say what Los Alamos’ dashboard would look like isn’t yet known. Council voiced support for implementing the dashboard.

“I think the fact that we have a way to measure progress is a good step forward and it will help gage where we need to have some additional attention in certain areas,”
Councilor Melanee Hand said.

Councilor Randall Ryti said he appreciated being presented with this idea; he further pointed out that “currently we have no metrics or timeframes on our priorities so I appreciate this as a direction to go and also allows for more regular review.”

Vice Chair Theresa Cull said, “I support it as well not just for the council (because it shows) where we are on certain strategic priorities but for the public as well to understand where we think we are and to have some discussions on whether or not they agree and if we have the right priorities set in accordance with what they want.”

Councilor Suzie Havemann said, “Just having something available like this to the public to easily see what the objectives are, how we are tracking progress and meeting them is really important.”

While he said he needed to see more of where the County proposed to go with the dashboard, Councilor David Reagor wondered how it would measure things since some objectives are hard to quantify.

“When I look at it, there’s a lot of things that are hard to quantify and what quantities are you going to put in the graphic,” he said.

In looking at the 2023 strategic priorities, council discussed and modified the following goals with supporting priorities under each:

Quality Governance:

• Quality governance is participatory, consensus-oriented, responsive, transparent, accountable, effective and efficient. Governance for quality is responsive to the present and future needs of stakeholders.

Operational Excellence:

• Operational excellence involves having structures, processes, standards, oversight in place to ensure that effective services are delivered to residents. The aim is to anticipate future needs and continuously improve the delivery of services and ensure that the services are of high quality and provided within available resources.

Economic Vitality:

• Economic vitality encompasses the ability of the community to diversify, develop, grow and sustain the many elements necessary for a local economy to flourish.

Quality of life:

• Quality of life is a reflection of general well-being and the degree to which residents are healthy, comfortable and able to enjoy the activities of daily life in the community.

Environmental Sustainability (to be broaden to Environmental Stewardship):

• Environmental Sustainability is a commitment to conserve natural resources and protect ecosystem to support health and wellbeing in the present and in the future through sustainable practices that enable residents to live in productive harmony with the natural environment.
  The strategic priorities will return to Council in February for final approval.