Developing a
plan has been
a basic need

The county commissioners are actually working on a plan for the future, and the first session went off without the usual barbs and jabs.

Four of the county’s seven commissioners attended this week’s four-hour planning session with Cape Fear Council of Government’s Chris May facilitating the meeting.

As strange as it may seem, a session like this hasn’t happened in years, but there’s no time like the present to correct past mistakes.

Bringing in a facilitator was a good idea. There’s some bad blood among the members of the present board, and bringing in a professional from the outside to mediate made the meeting go smoother.

May’s words to start meeting were appropriate, “Seek to understand first, then be understood.” What that essentially means is this: keep an open mind and think before you speak.

The group identified several major areas of long-term and short-term needs. These needs include restoring a badly depleted fund balance, ramping up economic development, establishing a priority list for capital needs, bringing costs like health care for employees in line with other counties, and forcing departments to operate within the frameworks of their budgets.

New County Manager Bill Clark is working on the new budget, which must be completed by June 30. It will be a huge challenge because of years of mismanagement and lack of planning. The county commissioners must have a road map for the future, but it can’t be from just one year to next.

But there is hope, thanks to sessions like this one, and perhaps similar sessions in the future.