Julian Smith is a newly-minted Town Councilor in the Town of Durham, New Hampshire and now the recipient of "official" documents. Strategic planning seems no more effective in the cradle of democracy than in was in the old Soviet Union. But everybody's doin' it.
Email to Town Administrator:
As I am still finding my way to act properly as a member
of the council, I'm not sure how best to respond to or
comment upon the undated and unpaginated
"2005 Police Department Strategic Plan" you transmitted to
the council via your memorandum of April 7th. I'll leave
it up to you to decide whether or not you should share
this message with the remainder of the council and/or
Chief Kurz.
Were I not on the council, I would simply direct my
comments to Chief Kurz--or send them to you with the
expectation that you would, if you agreed with what I
have to say, offer guidance to Dave Kurz, who signed-off
on the document by placing his name on the final page
under the words "Respectfully submitted."
Let me offer a few comments that will give you some sense
of what I see as real problems in this document.
Cover sheet: under the title "Durham Police 2005 Strategic
Plan," we find the words: "POSITIONING THE DURHAM POLICE AS
AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE COMMUNITY--IMPROVING THE QUALITY
OF LIFE THROUGH INNOVATION AND PARTNERSHIP". I don't think
I am alone in responding to those bold words with this
question: "Golly--do you mean to say that the Durham Police
are NOT an integral part of this community--that they are
only now BEGINNING to 'position' themselves?"
The first of the next fourteen pages is the "Introduction"--
and what a dreary introduction it is. Consider the first
sentence: "The Durham Police Department 2005 Strategic Plan is
designed to be an evolving document, contstantly reviewed,
updated [comma missing] and brought into line with the desires
of the community." Well, this member of the community really
desires that any document promulgated at some expense to the
taxpayers will not need to be constantly updated over the
course of a single year by police department officials
who have, I trust, better things to do.
And this member of the community desires that official
documents be grammatical. Consider the sentence in the
middle of the very first paragraph of the introduction:
"The plan ensures that the elements within this document
is [sic] understood, supported [comma missing] and
reflects [sic] the wishes of the community." The wish
of this member of the community is that official documents
follow the standard rules of formal punctuation and
subject/verb agreement.
Under "Citizen Survey" on the introduction page, we are
informed that the latest community survey revealed that
"The perceptions and desires of the community remained
static as it [sic] related to crime." As there is no
documentation of these alleged perceptions and desires,
I assume (perhaps incorrectly) that the community is
still against crime and in favor of law and order. As
for myself, I'm in favor of pronouns agreeing with their
nouns.
Under "Citizen Planning" we are told about "An annual
one day planning session designed to gain insight from
a diverse group of community clients regarding the
direction the agency should focus upon." Well, I was
at that planning session and the very last thing I
suggested was that the department should not refer
to citizens or taxpayers or voters (or, for that matter,
criminals or suspects) as "clients." But I'm distracting
you from the deadness at the heart of the sentence I
quoted: the notion that there is a "direction" the
department "should focus on." I would hope that the
department would focus on issues--and actually GO in
a direction.
The last sentence on the "Introduction" page suggests
that DPD may be lost: "In the most basic sense, [this
document] is the roadmap for our future." While I
admit that I could not bear to read the entire document
and only skimmed it, I also suggest that a roadmap
should be clear, precise, and without misleading
directions.
So let me cut to the chase and skip to the final page. In
his first sentence, Chief Kurz writes "I would like to thank
the following participants of [sic] our annual Strategic
Planning meeting, which was held March 13, 2004." As
the meeting he refers to was held on April 2nd of this
year, I suspect that he was probably revising an earlier
version of what the very first sentence alleges to be
a "constantly reviewed" and "updated" document.
In his next sentence, Kurz writes "Without their commitment
of time and energy, this plan would not have been possible,
or relevant." If I am correct in the assumption that Kurz
may have been tweaking his 2004 Strategic Plan, then it is
likely that Kurz is gilding a lily that wilted last year
or years ago. I will not comment on his suggestion that
this plan is relevant. What seems relevant to me is that
our police chief seems to be making statements that do not
hold up to careful scrutiny.
I do, however, appreciate that he cared enough to place my
name at the top of the left hand column of the seventeen
participants he named. And while I appreciate the nice
"Durham Police Community Partner" shirt I received at the
end of the session, I was disappointed that it was a
short-sleeved tan pullover suitable for playing golf,
not the long-sleeved blue-collar workshirt of the kind
given hard-working council members in past years.
Respectfully submitted,
Julian Smith
Chief Pain-in-the-Ass,
Durham Town Council