Pull out the air guitars, it’s time to celebrate a most excellent achievement. The National Association of Counties (NACo) named Buncombe County one of three winners of the Excellence in Strategic Planning Award for work on the 2025 Strategic Plan. NACo representative Kyle Cline says the award is a testament to exceptional vision, dedication, and outstanding efforts in advancing inclusive and impactful strategic planning. “Your innovative approach and unwavering commitment have set a new standard for excellence, and we are honored to recognize your achievements. This award not only highlights your remarkable work but also reflects the positive impact you have made in shaping the future of your county,” notes Kyle.
Buncombe County Strategy & Innovation Director Rafael Baptista says it’s an amazing endorsement of all the elements that went into planning and executing the 2025 Strategic Plan. “The award criteria are based on ensuring your strategic plan exhibits best practices. Elements that are considered include the process undertaken to create the plan, the assessment of community need, the structure of the plan, the leadership in place to manage the plan, having meaningful performance measures, plan execution, and how the plan drives budget decisions. Additionally, they look at how well the plan is communicated with employees and the public,” explains Rafael.
The 2025 Strategic Plan was the County’s first undertaking of a community-involved, long-term commitment to priorities created from public input. “I think what makes the 2025 Strategic Plan so special is how much it was driven by the community,” says Rafael. The feedback from the public and our employees played such a major role in the plan development in a way that is not always common. If you look at many of the County’s priorities over the last five years, so many of them can be tied back to the Strategic Plan.”
Rafael says there was an intentional focus on transparency and communication throughout the entire process of planning and implementation. “Between regular updates to the Board of Commissioners and our public-facing dashboard, we were able to keep the Strategic Plan front and center. Lots of credit also goes to our departments for being committed to working toward the goals in our Strategic Plan, and our Budget and Communications and Public Engagement teams for operationalizing it.”
Buncombe County is familiar with nationwide attention for its planning efforts. The 2043 Comprehensive Plan also won an award from NACo. Rafael says it’s no coincidence that intentional outreach, collaboration, and overall execution on plans have been recognized, “I think this shows that our County’s overall approach to strategy is being recognized as a leader in the space.”
Buncombe County would like to thank everyone involved that helped make this collective effort an overall success, especially all our community members that provided invaluable insights for the needs of Buncombe County. Speaking of feedback, learn more about our efforts to create the Community Strategic Plan 2030, take a survey, find out about meetings, and more at our SP 2030 page.