In the first three sessions of Engage Gwinnett, the members heard from Alfie Meek about Gwinnett County's economy, Glenn Stephens about its government structure, Aaron Bovos about its budget, financial condition and budget process, a panel of citizens advisory members of the Gwinnett 2030 Unified Plan consisting of Renee Byrd-Lewis, Jon Richards, Teresa Cantrell and Mark Mullin together with Steve Logan (who led the Unified Plan study before he retired) regarding the two-year visioning process that citizens advisory committee engage in before submitting its report to the Board of Commissioners, and from Dr. Jeff Dorfman a Professor of Economics from the University of Georgia regarding peer counties. Engage Gwinnett has divided into four work groups focusing on the four major work areas of county government including public safety and the courts, fire and EMS, community services, and planning and development. After receiving presentations from department directors and their staffs ("Key Resource People") regarding steps taken during the past two years to reduce expenses and the impact on service levels provided by these departments, the members of Engage Gwinnett have rolled up their sleeves and are beginning to discuss in their work groups what they have learned and what recommendations to make. Our goal is to begin to develop recommendations and to receive additional input from citizens of Gwinnett County before preparing and submitting a written report to the Board of Commissioners in April 2010.
Because some of the work group areas are larger than others for them the process of receiving briefings by Key Resource People chairs will take several meetings while for other work groups these reports have concluded.
Engage Gwinnett started with existing service levels because its hard to make good judgments on what should be until you understand what is. Members were encouraged to ask the following questions in their work groups as they listened to the Key Resource People talking about the services their departments provide:
- What budget reductions have already been made in the last two years?
- How do these budget reductions affect the progress the county is making toward the vision set out in the Unified Plan of Gwinnett as an "International Gateway"?
- What services are being provided?
- At what service levels are these services being provided?
- How are these services financed today?
- How could these services be done differently?
- What should we expect of these services? Accepting that its reasonable to expect that government services will help us achieve something so what is it that we are trying to achieve?
More than 140 members of various Gwinnett County departments have been engaged in providing information requested by Engage Gwinnett. We would like to especially recognize Jann Moore (LG Class of 1987) and Joe Sorenson (LG Class of 2008) for their many hours coordinating the sessions and in making a readily accessible public record of them.
We invite you to follow the work of Engage Gwinnett on Facebook and Twitter or by watching videos of the meeting presentations which are available on the Engage Gwinnett website, www.engagegwinnett.com. If your schedule permits, we invite you to attend one or more of the morning work sessions (dates are posted on the website) or one or more of the four evening public information meetings to be held in February (dates to be determined). We hope that you will agree that Engage Gwinnett has provided Gwinnett citizens with a direct view into the county budget development process because we have worked very deliberately to do so in as open and transparent a manner as possible. If you have any suggestions for Engage Gwinnett, we invite you to share them with us.
Mike Levengood and Bill McCargo
