The Person County Board of Commissioners approved the county’s 2025–27 strategic plan during its June 6 work session, accepting manager-proposed edits to mission and core-value language and removing a previously proposed community survey item.

The county manager presented the suggested changes to the mission statement (proposed replacement of “facilitating” with “catalyzing” in places where staff recommended it) and to several core values, including suggested wording to emphasize family-friendly services and adherence to open-government statutes for transparency. Commissioners discussed whether to keep a line that said “communication is a priority” and agreed that language tying county practice to open-government policies and statutes was preferable.

The board also removed an item that had proposed a community-wide survey as part of the service-excellence goal. The manager and several commissioners said they were not convinced an outsourced survey would yield statistically representative community input and that staff could pursue alternative outreach methods. The board asked staff to continue implementing plan objectives and to incorporate suggested edits.

Quote

“I’m comfortable with the core values,” the county manager said while framing the suggested changes, adding that the edits aligned with earlier remarks the manager had made at the previous meeting.

What happens next

Staff will incorporate the approved wording changes into the published strategic plan and continue to report progress on plan objectives quarterly. The board approved the plan for the period 2025–27.