County News

By Roger Baker
County Manager

2/9/2006 - The Gilpin County Commissioners held a work session after Tuesday’s brief regular meeting, with the thought of adopting some goals and objectives for the upcoming year.

  This is a process we went through last year, and it’s both encouraging and sobering to look back at last year’s goals and see how well we did.

  Overall, I think we made some real progress. We’ve moved a long way toward a true performance-based salary system, while at the same time we’ve been able to support legislation that would more adequately compensate our elected officials.

  Our department directors have cooperated by preparing monthly reports to the Commissioners, and they themselves have in many cases gone through a similar process of developing goals and objectives for their own departments.

  And as anyone who follows the Commissioners’ meetings knows, we’ve regularly found areas where we haven’t been fully complying with either state statutes or our own requirements, and have passed resolutions and otherwise memorialized practices that needed more official sanction than they have previously had.

  All of this has to do with creating a system of governance that is open and accountable, but yet based on well-established needs and criteria. The danger otherwise is of having departments, or even a County as a whole, which are so driven by circumstances—whether it’s an individual request, or a “new” opportunity—that we forget what the real purpose of the organization is.

  So in addition to listing goals and objectives—most of which are fairly specific—the Commissioners also decided it would be appropriate to adopt a mission statement. That’s a sort of concise statement of exactly what it is we expect, as an organization, to provide for our citizens and taxpayers.

  We’ll be working on that, and refining our goals and objectives, over the next few weeks. It’s a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating process, but one that should bear fruit in a better sense of direction for all of us here in Gilpin County government.