Sauk County 20/20 - Vol. II - Final Work Plan

Introduction

Perhaps without realizing it, each of us engages in planning processes on a daily basis. Activities like budgeting for a child's education, saving money for retirement, or deciding which route to take home from work are all activities that require planning. In each of the aforementioned acts, the individual must identify what they wish to accomplish, take an inventory of the resources they possess, figure out a strategy of how to reach their goal, and then work to make it happen.

The Comprehensive Planning Process

The comprehensive planning document is an effective tool used by all levels of government to guide future land use policy. Working together as a community, citizens are asked to evaluate the current condition of their locale, investigate how it is changing, envision the future for it they desire, and then are charged with creating a strategy to reach that goal.

This process, which traditionally takes 2-3 years to complete, is a multi-step planning approach. Each step attempts to explore and then to answer questions about the community:

Step 1: Profile Statement - Where are we now?

Step 2: Trends Statement - Where are we going?

Step 3: Vision Statement - Where do we want to be?

Step 4: Action Plan - How do we get there?

Why Should Sauk County Plan?

Every unit of government must be aware of the balance of costs and benefits that result from increased development. Although additional development attracts new tax dollars, it also costs money to provide additional services to effected areas. In order to ensure that the benefits outweigh the costs, communities must plan for development before it happens.

In recent years, Sauk County has experienced increasing pressures to develop. If this growth is left unchecked, many of the things that residents enjoy about Sauk County could be gone forever. The adoption of the plan will prepare decision makers for the future; providing a benchmark on which to make future land use policy, enhancing intergovernmental efficiency, and the basis for future updates of county ordinances. In many areas, the practical benefits of employing uniform land use policies include: saving money on capital infrastructure projects, directing economic development, guiding new growth, and the conservation of the natural beauty of Sauk County.

Viewing this circumstance as an opportunity to enhance the quality of life for Sauk County residents, decision makers thought that the time was right to commit to this proactive planning process. When completed, this procedure is meant to allow citizens not only to identify how they would like Sauk County to look like in 25 years, but also to create guidelines of how to get there.

The Sauk County Experience

Over the last number of years, an increasing number of planning workshops have been held throughout Sauk County. These forums, which have been well attended, pointed to a growing awareness of land use and growth management issues. In the summer of 1994, the Sauk County Executive and Legislative Committee appointed a steering committee to explore the possibility of creating a countywide comprehensive plan.

After looking to a number of potential planning resources, it was proposed by the steering committee that the county hire a graduate level class of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was believed that this resource would produce an excellent planning blueprint document at a nominal cost to the county. Therefore, in November 1994, it was agreed to approve the expenditure for the workshop in the Sauk County 1995 Planning and Zoning Department budget. The cost of this expenditure, which was approximately $5,000, would charge the students to create a "pre-planning" document. Upon its completion in May 1995, the students presented their findings to the Sauk County Board.

At that time, recognizing the value of both protecting its unique character, quality of life, and accommodating new growth, the Sauk County Board of Supervisors, through the 1996 budget process, authorized the creation of a comprehensive county plan. Once completed, this planning document is anticipated to serve as a guide to Sauk County land use decisions well into the 21st century. The following work plan is intended to serve as an organizational framework, a project time line, and a budget for this process.

Part 1 - The Organizational Form

How to Administer the Plan

In early 1995, the decision had not been made of whether to use Sauk County staff or to hire a private planning consulting firm to administer the plan. Because of the immense scope of the planning process, many units of government opt to hire a private planning consultant. However, while private planning consultants are adept at producing comprehensive plans, there is often a concern that they will employ a "one size fits all" approach to planning. Furthermore, if a consultant's plan is adopted, the implementation of its policies are often more difficult than if a plan is generated by the staff.

In the summer of 1995, in order to create a more meaningful and fitting future land use strategy for Sauk County, it was decided to do the plan "in house." As a result, in April 1996, the Sauk County Department of Planning and Zoning hired a staff planner to administer the planning process. Once completed, the plan will be a representative vision of the citizens of Sauk County, being managed by the individuals that will be responsible for implementing and administering the plan's future policies.

Involving the Public

The private citizen often feels helpless in the face of government bureaucracy, believing that their opinions rarely factor in the decision making. However, in the comprehensive planning process, citizens drive the process and work together to create a consensual vision for the future. Although broad citizen participation is central to the plan, structure is also essential in order to help the process from being bogged down and unproductive.

Consultation of Steering Committee

Having gained experience in facilitating smaller planning efforts, the steering committee was asked to make recommendations about the county's planning process. It was the consensus of that group, that a formal citizen based decision making body should be created in order to guide the planning process. Using facts, experience, and comments presented by all interested parties, a Citizen's Advisory Committee (CAC) will be responsible for hearing, processing, and then consolidating all information from the planning process into a representative vision for Sauk County's future.

Selection of Citizen's Advisory Committee (CAC)

To represent the many interests of Sauk County, it was decided that the Citizen's Advisory Committee should be made up of a wide mix of residents. Specifically, it will be comprised of seasoned Sauk County decision makers, private citizens, and other selected actors in the community. The appointment of CAC members will be approved by the County Board of Supervisors.

Size and Membership Criteria

It is proposed that the committee be a total of twenty three (23) members, with two (2) members of the County Board of Supervisors, ten (10) representatives of delineated county zones (see map 1), three (3) "at large" positions reserved for citizens, and eight (8) representatives of selected constituencies. Groups that might be represented by this last category include:

Farming, Various Chamber's of Commerce, School Board's, Business/Industry, Tourism, Native Americans, Cities/Towns/Villages and Natural Resources.

All CAC members will be asked to commit for the entire process and to attend meetings as scheduled.

The reasoning behind creating a "sitting committee," is that it will develop an informed body which is cognizant of the entire process. This will help to avoid repetition, limit the influence of special interests, and allow policies to be decided upon through the democratic process. To involve new faces, an effort should be made to include individuals that are not typically involved in local or county government.

Biographical Profile

To insure this mix of Sauk County's citizenry, all prospective CAC candidates will be asked to fill out a biographical profile. The steering committee will use this information to create a preliminary list of CAC members. In cases where there is no clear cut choice, the candidate's apparent ability to work well together with others will be considered. The individuals that are nominated to the CAC will then be confirmed by the Sauk County Board of Supervisors.

Composition of the CAC

County Board Members
The CAC will employ two members of the Sauk County Board of Supervisors. Their presence will infuse the board members public meeting experience and knowledge of county issues into the process. Although membership to the committee is at the discretion of the Board of Supervisors, it is hoped that the board would appoint members that represent a cross section of that body.
Planning Zone Members
A list will be compiled containing names of individuals from the delineated planning zones that are willing to serve on the CAC. Staff will review their biographical profiles, in order to create a body that will be representative of the inhabitants of Sauk County. If selected, members will be asked to agree to take on this responsibility for its entire term.
Other Members
It was decided there should be a number of "at large" members of the CAC. These CAC members will consist of two types: unaffiliated membership and affiliated membership.
Unaffiliated Members
Three of the CAC members will have no official affiliation with any recognized organization, serving as an "at large" committee member. It is believed that their inclusion will help to expand the planning dialogue and thereby improve the process. Interested parties will be asked to write a brief note explaining why they would like to be involved in the process. After sorting through these short memos, the steering committee will present a list of candidates to the Sauk County Board.

Members with Group Affiliation
Eight members that will be included will represent the following groups: Farming, Various Chamber's of Commerce, School Board's, Business/Industry, Tourism, Native Americans, Cities/Towns/Villages and Natural Resources. Although these individuals represent special interests, hearing the concerns of a large cross section of Sauk County constituencies is essential to the planning process.

Meeting of the Full Citizen Advisory Committee

The full CAC will meet at regular intervals at various places throughout Sauk County. Each meeting will begin with the review of issue areas assigned to the sub-committees. Meetings will last approximately three hours and will focus on one selected sub-committee issue area, with the appropriate sub-committee members leading the discussion. A member of the CAC will be responsible for providing updates to the Sauk County Planning, Zoning and Land Records Committee and the full County Board on an "as needed" basis.

Sub-Committees

The CAC will be broken down into six "four member sub-committees" that include: Housing, Community Change, Economic Development, Natural Resources, Farmland Preservation and Transportation. These sub-committees, which will hold meetings throughout Sauk County, are designed to be a fact finding tool for the full CAC. Each sub-committee will be expected to follow the aforementioned four step planning process.

Additional Participants

Issue Area Experts

In order to aid the CAC and its sub committees, persons identified as having expert knowledge of meeting subject matter will be asked to participate in the process. These "experts" will be asked to speak on a subject and will be available to answer questions of CAC members. If the subject matter is controversial, an attempt to represent all sides of the issue will be made.

Citizen Participation

There will be an opportunity for all citizens of Sauk County to actively participate in a survey process and the public meetings. In late 1996, in order to gauge what people are thinking, a survey will be administered to a representative sample of Sauk County households. The survey will be carefully written to minimize biased information. Citizens will also be able to state their positions during one of the processes numerous public meetings. At these meetings, they will be able to register their view or to speak for a limited amount of time. During the first 30 minutes of each meeting, there will be another opportunity for citizens to speak in a less formal setting.

Part 2 - The Timeline

Plan Timeline

It is believed that the Sauk County comprehensive planning process will take approximately two and one-half (2 1/2) years to complete. In order to pace this process, the comprehensive plan activities have been broken down into sections: Formation of the CAC, The Profile Statement, The Trends Statement, The Vision Statement, The Action Plan and Implementation.

These planning steps are not exclusive of each other and there may be overlap between them. The following is an overview of the timeline and a brief description of the activities that need to be completed during that period. For a visual representation of the comprehensive plan timeline, please refer to the attached charts (Appendix II).

Formation of the CAC

August-September 1996

In June 1996, staff will begin the process of assembling a list of Sauk County residents that will be considered for CAC membership and as alternates to the Citizen's Advisory Committee. A preliminary list of CAC members and alternates will be presented for consideration at the October 1996, meeting of the Sauk County Board of Supervisors. After the membership is confirmed, one member of the CAC will be assigned with the responsibility of briefly updating the Planning, Zoning and Land Records Committee and the full Sauk County Board of CAC activities on a periodic basis.

Orientation

October-November 1996

Shortly after forming the CAC, there will be an orientation period that will consist of several meetings of the entire CAC membership. The meetings will focus on educating the committee members about land use planning and the comprehensive planning process. It is hoped that this activity will begin to acquaint all CAC members with each other and with some planning basics. Goals of these initial meeting might include: naming the plan, creating a logo for the plan, viewing instructional video tapes, and reviewing other comprehensive planning processes.

CAC Elections

November 1996

In November, the meetings will focus on setting up the formal structure of the CAC. To open these meetings, staff will explain the CAC Organizational By-laws and the expected meeting decorum for all CAC meetings. During this exercise, CAC members will participate in elections, selecting committee officers and set a meeting schedule for the CAC.

Sub-Committee Appointments

December 1996

In December, CAC members will be assigned to serve on the planning sub-committees. An initial list of sub-committees include: Housing, Community Change, Economic Development, Natural Resources, Farmland Preservation, and Transportation. When pairing individual CAC members to the sub-committees, stated issue area preferences will be taken into consideration.

Upon being notified of their sub-committee assignments, members will split off with an assigned member of the Sauk County Planning and Zoning staff. This staff member will facilitate the sub-committee planning process, conduct a sub-committee orientation, administer the sub-committee elections, and help to establish monthly meeting schedules. All sub-committees will be asked to meet at least once per month, involving issue experts and interested citizens.

Meeting Locations

One reason that some citizens do not get involved in the typical planning process is that they find meeting locations inconvenient. Therefore, instead of holding meetings at one place, sub- committees will "take the show on the road" throughout the planning process. It is hoped that by holding advertised meetings throughout the county, a greater number of local citizens will be encouraged to participate in the Sauk County comprehensive planning process.

The Four Step Planning Process

In the spring of 1995, the students from the University of Wisconsin's Department of Urban and Regional Planning graduate program, authored a three volume document relating to the creation of the Sauk County Comprehensive Plan. This effort will serve as a framework for the county's four step planning process, which will include:

Step 1: The Profile Statement
Step 2: The Trends Statement
Step 3: The Value Statement
Step 4: The Action Plan

Step 1: The Profile Statement

One of the first activities that the sub-committees will be charged with, is the creation of profile statements. Using information from the county's past, the sub-committees will examine "where Sauk County is now." As part of the UW student's efforts, they suggested that the Profile Statement might be broken into two sections: The County Profile and The Value Statement.

The County Profile (Data Gathering)

June 1996-March 1997

The County Profile is a data gathering activity which is meant to create a snapshot picture of Sauk County today. This is accomplished by gathering information on a number of selected issues from a variety of sources, for designated years. The staff is currently gathering data and will continue these efforts as requested by the sub-committees, the CAC, or the Sauk County Board. The origin of some of this information includes: the U.S. Census, State of Wisconsin Agency data, University of Wisconsin-Extension data, and other appropriate Sauk County records (Appendix III).

Survey

January-February 1997

A second component of The Profile Statement will be The Value Statement. Unlike the county profile, this is an exercise that seeks to uncover the opinions of Sauk County residents, as they relate to planning issues and the county's future. It is expected, that either a mailed survey or a telephone survey will be conducted as a part of this effort. Survey questions will be designed to identify: issues, values, perceptions of the future, and citizens' expectations.

An additional tool which will be used to determine what Sauk County residents are thinking will be the local sub-committee meetings. During the process, the sub-committees (as well as the CAC) will be employing S.W.O.T. Analysis. This planning approach examines issue areas by exploring its Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats as they relate to Sauk County. The goal of S.W.O.T. analysis is to encourage involved citizens to look at issues from all sides, lessening biases and allowing CAC members explore issues in greater detail.

Creation & Presentation of The Profile Statement

February-May 1997

As mentioned earlier, The Profile Statement is to be created to identify where Sauk County is at now. Once completed, each sub-committee will make a presentation of their profile statement to the CAC for ratification. After which, the chairpersons of each of the sub- committees will work together on a presentation to introduce the individual and a comprehensive Value Statement.

The UW student report anticipated that the creation of a profile statement would last approximately six months. This schedule appears to be reasonable, making the target date for presenting the final profile statement to the CAC approximately May 1997.

Step 2: The Trends Statement

Projections, Forecasts and Impacts

Once an adequate profile statement is adopted, the next phase of the planning process is the creation of The Trends Statement, which asks "Where is Sauk County Going?" During this stage, the CAC's task will be to form various scenarios of what Sauk County might look like in the future. In their report, the UW student group identified three devices used to make predictions: projections, impacts, and forecasts. These three terms are defined below:

PROJECTIONS: a look into the future assuming that current rates of change will continue into the future.

FORECASTS: a look into the future assuming that current rates of change will not continue into the future. To make forecasts, assumptions about the effects of change are made by the forecaster.

IMPACTS: a look into the immediate future designed to make people realize that decisions today effect tomorrow.

Sub-Committee Proposals

June-August 1997

At the beginning of this stage, the sub-committees will be asked to prepare a list of the issues that they feel should be studied in a "Trend Proposal Report." In this effort, sub-committees will explain why they feel certain information is valuable to the plan and will describe how they plan to obtain it. The process is designed to force the sub-committees to be realistic about the information they wish to accumulate. It will also allow others, who are aware of information sources, to share its location with the sub-committees.

In addition, each sub-committee will be asked to create a list of issues that they do not wish to pursue and to explain why they have omitted this subject matter. Possible reasons for not investigating a trend might include: data unavailability, prohibitive expense or its low priority. At the conclusion of the "Trend Proposal Report" presentation, the entire CAC will advise the sub-committees what trend data it deems essential to the Sauk County Comprehensive Plan.

Developing Scenarios and Review

June-August 1997

The estimation of future data trends must be as accurate as possible to be of value to the Sauk County Comprehensive Plan. One challenge will be to locate useful forecasts that other organizations have compiled for different projects. When predictions have not been completed, efforts to obtain aid from nonprofit organizations or other governmental agencies will be actively sought. Over the next few months, the staff will be meeting with state, university and nonprofit organizations in order to discuss what information is available for the process.

Analyze Policies

September-November 1997

Once the projections, forecasts and impacts are compiled, the sub-committees will hold public meetings in order to present and then to discuss their findings. At this time, issue experts and the public will be involved to discuss the sub-committee's data and what it means to Sauk County. It is hoped that through this discussion, additional ideas to be researched will be discovered. Any new reasonable trend proposals that arise from these sub-committee meetings should be pursued.

Trends Statement

December 1997

Once these projections and future scenarios have been discussed, the sub-committees will create a written report critiquing each data sets strengths and weaknesses. This information will then be assembled into a final "Trends Statement Report," which will be presented to the full CAC for their consideration. At this time, the members of the CAC will be given the opportunity to voice any questions or concerns they might have concerning the sub-committee's findings.

Step 3: The Vision Statement

Visioning Exercise

December 1997-February 1998
During the visioning process, citizens will be asked to contemplate the county's future. Visioning activities focus on a broad range of issues, asking Sauk County residents to look at ongoing changes in the world and their effect on Sauk County. In this process, residents will participate in activities which will draw out an idealized version of a future Sauk County. Once this vision is created, participants will use this information to deal with real world issues.

Create Alternate Scenarios

February-April 1998

Once the trends information and the visioning exercise have been completed, the sub-committees will develop future "real world" scenarios. Issue experts and related nonprofit organizations should be an invaluable resource at this point.

Sub Committees Endorse Objectives and Policies

March-May 1998

Once the scenarios have been produced, the sub-committees will agree on which to adopt. Then once a scenario is chosen, the sub-committees will delineate the reasons why they chose that alternative. This exercise will be useful when the sub-committees make a formal recommendation to the CAC of which scenarios they believe should be endorsed by the entire body. The sanctioning of the sub-committee selected scenarios will occur at a CAC meeting.

CAC Supported Scenarios

May 1998

After all of the options have been discussed and evaluated, CAC members will be asked to endorse scenarios. All of the endorsed scenarios will be forwarded to the staff to be used in writing the plan. At this point, using the plan data and the ideas that have arisen from the planning process, the CAC will know where we are now, where we are going, where the citizens want Sauk County to be, and will work to figure out the preferred future.

Step 4: Action Plan

Draft Plan

June 1998

By June 1998, the staff will have a rough draft of the Sauk County Comprehensive Plan. During the entire planning process, the staff will be writing text on an ongoing basis and will present rough drafts to the sub-committees and the CAC. Therefore, once the Vision Statement is complete, the staff will combine all of the earlier information with the chosen alternatives and create a draft plan. This draft will be further reviewed by the steering committee, before being presented to the CAC

Sauk County Summit

July 1998

The Sauk County Summit will be a day long county meeting where the draft Sauk County Comprehensive Plan will be presented to the CAC for its consideration. The public will be encouraged to attend and to make suggestions about the final shape of the comprehensive plan. After reviewing the various sections of the plan, the CAC will direct the staff to make final plan revisions. A copy of the draft plan will be provided to CAC members at least one week prior to this meeting.

Final Plan Revision & Approval

July 1998-November 1998

Throughout the last half of 1998, the staff will continue in the writing process and will be asked to write and revise various sections of the plan as needed. Throughout this planning phase, the sub-committees and full CAC will meet together as needed to review and revise the plan. When staff is satisfied with a draft of the plan, it will present it to the CAC for approval. After making final changes to the plan, it will be initially submitted to the Sauk County Planning, Zoning and Land Records Committee and then to the Sauk County Board for approval.

Present Comprehensive Plan to County Board

December 1998