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ORANGE COUNTY <br />BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS <br />WORK SESSION AGENDA ITEM ABSTRACT <br />Meeting Date: August 31, 2006 <br />Action Agenda <br />Item No. 3 <br />ECT: Cou <br />Priorities <br />DEPARTMENT: County Manager <br />ATTACHMENT(S): <br />Dictionary Definitions <br />Tables -January 2006 Priorities/Goals <br />1/20/06 BOCC Retreat Materials re: <br />Priorities <br />Excerpt from 1/20/06 BOCG Minutes <br />Excerpt from 1/31/06 BOCC Minutes <br />PUBLIC HEARING: (Y/N) No <br />INFORMATION CONTACT: <br />Rod Visser, 919-245-2308 <br />PURPOSE: To discuss and provide direction to staff regarding tap BOCC priorities for the <br />remainder of calendar year 2006. <br />BACKGROUND: During Fall 2005, staff and the Board pursued a process through which <br />Commissioners identified a wide range of policy and program matters that they considered <br />priorities that should be addressed in the short-to near term. The Board spent time at the <br />annual planning retreat on January 20, 2006, and at a subsequent work session on January 31, <br />2006 discussing the status of these priorities, plus the most recent set of goal statements that <br />had been prepared for the Board's review (at the January 2002 retreat). Relevant excerpts from <br />the minutes of both January 2006 meetings are attached for the Board's review. <br />The Board's discussion at the time stopped short of identifying the handful of top priorities out of <br />the group to which the staff should foremost attend. Progress has been made on a wide range <br />of the priorities cited, and other potential priority program and policy matters have emerged <br />during succeeding months. Staff believe this is an opportune time far the Board to review and <br />discuss previously identified priorities as well as any others that have arisen since January <br />2006. The desired result of that discussion would be approval by the Board of a list of a half- <br />dozen or so top priorities for the remainder of calendar year 2006. <br />The Board may wish to have a discussion about what the terms "goal", "objective', and "priority" <br />imply vis-a-vis the Board's process far establishing, maintaining, and amending as necessary its <br />annual workplan. Dictionary definitions of these terms are included in a separate attachment to <br />the abstract. <br />With regard to the County's historical practice of establishing and producing formal written goal <br />statements beginning in the early 1990s, goals have tended to reflect broad policy <br />interests/statements of the BOCC, with multiple objectives frequently being identified under a <br />particular goal to bring a higher degree of specificity to one or more outcomes the Board may <br />wish to achieve. Staff have typically gone several layers deeper than that to identify individual <br />