Our Business Model We began with a strategic planning process that resulted in a mission for the City, a set of strategic priorities and Key Intended Outcomes. Strategic Priorities (Adopted Strategic Plan Document.pdf) Beginning in 1997, the City Commission began a process of strategic planning designed to identify the issues that must be addressed to achieve our mission and that will persist over the lifetime of the Strategic Plan. Reviewed and updated biennially, the strategic plan creates a shared vision for the future of the community. These long-range policy issues developed by the City Commission, and reaffirmed during the Fiscal Years 2005 and 2006 Strategic Plan, emphasize the values of our customers: Customer-Involved Government Financial Health and Economic Development Excellence in Education Neighborhood and Environmental Vitality Youth Development and Family Values Unity in the Community For each priority, an action plan was developed for implementing policy and operating measures. Through this process, the Business Plan was developed: Commission Priority: Identify the vital issues; Key Intended Outcomes (KIO): Identify desired results; Initiatives: Allocate activities, resources, personnel, investment and time planned for the year to achieve each KIO; Performance Measures: Specific and measurable data indicating the effectiveness in meeting the KIOs; By setting quality targets (Key Intended Outcomes) we are able to determine the resources necessary to meet them. Business Plan http://www.coralsprings.org/publications/Budget_FY2006/BusinessPlan.pdf With the priorities and indicators set, the operations of the City are reviewed and redirected to bring the strategic vision to life. Specific actions, programs, capital purchases, staffing requirements and funding levels are developed in response to the needs identified in the strategic plan. The plan is an outgrowth of the strategic priorities, capturing the City’s vision in a quantifiable form, improving decision making and resource allocation. A benefit of using a Business Plan is the direct link between costs, activities and key drivers. We use this model to monitor our performance by: Performing variance analysis using cost drivers;  Process mapping that links budget items to activities; Identifying value-added and non-value-added activities. In developing the Fiscal Year 2006 operating budget, departments analyze existing services and potential services in light of the Strategic Priorities. The Business Plan identifies added and removed services, which are then quantified in the line item budget. They reflect not only the strategic priorities as set by the City Commission, but also incorporate feedback from customer surveys and policy initiatives that contribute to the long term financial health of the City. Departments set goals to meet the needs identified by the strategic priorities. To meet these goals, programs within the departments have specific objectives that are measured through process indicators. Individual staff member’s objectives and performance measures are then linked to the program objectives. Each employee knows what the end result should be and how it contributes to the Strategic Plan. In this way, the budget becomes a tool for monitoring, rather than controlling, operating performance. The performance measure tables included with each department’s summary is designed to show how the program objectives support the strategic priorities. Performance Measures are explicitly related to the Key Intended Outcome that they support and the strategic priorities that they fulfill. Our policy deployment model follows this path:         Mission Statement             Strategic Priorities                 Key Intended Outcomes                     Performance Measures It’s significant that we view the process in this fashion, so that we combine top-down and bottom-up input, tightly linking targets to the strategic plan.