The Lake County Board of Directors recently met to develop a Strategic Plan for the League. The Retreat session was facilitated by Diana Robinson from NIU’s Center for Governmental Studies.

Some of the Strategic Priorities are listed below:

Continue to focus and build support for the LCML legislative agenda.
Executive Director and Legislative Committee are effective in identifying and communicating about issues that are important to LCML members. However, it is the action taken by the member municipalities that are most effective in influencing legislative outcomes.  It is essential to increase the number of phone calls and other direct contacts made by LCML members to legislators.

Continue to strengthen collaboration and alignment with like-minded organizations.
The creation of a new Membership and Outreach Committee could assist in these activities as well as in member recruitment as described in the next strategic priority.

Increase membership.
Expanding the base of members and associate members emerged during the retreat as the preferred method of increasing revenues. The most promising strategy for recruiting new mayors to LCML is to have member mayors make the contact. This peer-to-peer connection allows the member mayor to speak first-hand about the benefits and advantages of the LCML.

Expand support structure.  Addressing the first three strategic priorities will require additional organizational support.  Three potential areas were identified:

1. Revisiting the board committee structure with an eye to creating a new Membership and Outreach Committee or other new committees to address priority issues, such as transportation.
2. Reviewing the LCML bylaws to ensure that they reflect the desired purpose and goals of member composition and other provisions to facilitate effective and efficient operations.
3. Developing additional resources to make the LCML executive director position full-time.  The current scope of activity requires a full-time position, and this becomes even more imperative as additional strategic priorities are pursued.  Resource development could be the focus of a new committee or it could be combined with a new membership committee.

For a copy of the complete report, click here.

The LCML Board of Directors is in the process of developing a Strategic Planning survey for members. We are working with NIU’s Center for Government Studies to develop the survey.

We hope to send the survey via email to mayors in late August. Please watch for the survey and respond. Thanks in advance for your cooperation.

The members of the Lake County Municipal League express their sincere sympathy to the family of Rep. Mark Beaubien on his sudden death Sunday. Mark was a wonderful man with a sense of fairness and compassion. He will be missed by more than the people he represented in his district.

Visitation for Rep. Beaubien will be Thursday, June 9, from 1:00-9:00 pm at the Davenport Family Funeral Home, 419 E. Terra Cotta Ave. (Route 176), Crystal Lake.  The funeral will be held on Friday, June 10, at  10:30 am in St. Anne Church, 120 Ela St. (at the corner of Franklin St.), Barrington.

The Lake County Municipal League website will be getting a facelift over the next few weeks. We hope to add some pictures that represent our member communities. Members will have the opportunity to comment or link to articles on the site as well.