Members of the Habersham County Board of Commissioners spent Friday, January 27, planning for the county’s future.
Meeting in a planning retreat from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Common Ground in Cornelia, commissioners heard from various department heads and County Manager Alicia Vaughn on topics facing the county over the next several years and beyond.
“We had our strategic planning retreat Friday and I personally think that it was a very good use of our time,” Vaughn said. “For me, as a county manager, it’s always a great thing to have all of the board in a room and have a concentrated time to talk about some of our biggest challenges and then also opportunities that we have for the upcoming year.
Some of the topics included landfill needs and challenges, a jail needs assessment, fire department needs and challenges, capital project funding, a budget and financial overview, strategic planning, and a brief hospital update.
“At this particular strategic planning retreat, we did focus on some of the bigger challenges I think the county is going to be facing,” Vaughn said. “Certainly, the jail was an important topic for us as well as the big capital projects that have been approved on the most recent SPLOST. We’re going to be moving forward with those, so we were just talking about funding options and then also the landfill – and the fire department. We also spent a great amount of time talking about the fire department and its staffing needs and facility needs, so it was a great way to have the commissioners’ attention, to give them some pertinent information about where we are now and what we’re going to need moving forward the next year. It’s also a great to put information out to them for their consideration before we kick off the budget cycle for the next year, so I thought it was a big success.”
The retreat, open to the public and livestreamed on the county website, was facilitated by Tim Fenbert and Bill Stark of LeaderGov.
