Community plan indicators — what’s the big deal?

What’s all the fuss about indicators in the Community Plan, and why do I think they’re important?  

Clear indicators are where the rubber hits the road.  This is where people actually begin to understand the intent of the plan, and how they will be affected by its implementation.  The draft plan says that the indicators are “the measures we will use to determine if the Community Plan is being implemented successfully.”

So, for the various goals and objectives in the Plan, the document (which you can see at this link:http://www.banff.ca/business/planning-development/banff-community-plan/community-plan-review.htm  ) includes indicators, such as “numbers of visitors”, “consumption of water”, and so on. But here’s the problem — the draft plan doesn’t say whether we want these things to go up or down, neither does it say “by how much”.

In order to tell whether we’re meeting the goals of the plan, for each indicator, the Town would need to know where we are now, where we want to be, and how far along that road the Town intends to get within the 5-year life of the plan.

Let’s take one of the indicators as a typical example: from page 26, “Number of visitors”.  In its present form, any reader of the plan can put his/her own interpretation on that indicator.  Different people might want the town’s visitation to go up, to go down, to stay the same, and each one of those readers could assume that the Town’s intent is the same as his/her own.   

To be meaningful, this indicator would need to be written like this: “2007 visitation is x, our ideal level of visitation is y, and within the 5-year life of this plan, we hope to get to z”.  

I can completely understand that everyone will heave a large sigh at the thought of still more work.  But doing this work will make the difference between vague direction and clear direction.  I think that we’ve already shown an appetite for grappling with the issues on a level of substance, rather than concept.  A lot of good information exists in the Community Indicators project, which could provide a springboard for focused discussion and recommended direction.  And perhaps we could just choose the top 20 priorities in the plan, and set out meaningful indicators for those.

If Council revisits the indicators in the plan, and decides on measurable targets for the most important ones, we will have accomplished several important tasks:

• we will make sure that the implications of the plan are clear to Banffites, helping us all make personal and business decisions based on a clear understanding of where the town is headed in the next five years.
• we will be providing clear and unequivocal direction to Town staff, so that they can carry out the true intent of the plan.
• we will make it clear which goals and objectives of the plan are intended to be the main priorities over the next five years.  There are many, many excellent objectives in this plan – much more than five years’ worth.  It would be good to identify the top, short-term priorities.
• we will ensure that the Minister is clearly informed of the direction of the Town, making his approval more likely.
• we will be keeping
  
  Banff in the municipal planning forefront as an example of best practices in planning and regulation.