As is the case with transit agencies throughout the nation, and, in particular in California, the San Mateo County Transit District is facing tough times due to the economic downturn and deep cuts in state funding.

Tough times mean difficult and unpleasant decisions, such as service reductions, fare increases and layoffs.

But as District officials and Board members grapple with these decisions, they are guided by an unexpected resource – a Strategic Plan.

What? A Strategic Plan? Seriously?

It can’t be. Strategic Plans are prepared because someone insists on it, developed and written by someone working almost in isolation over several months and then put on a shelf, never to bother anyone again.

Ah, but not this time.

Instead, the Transit District has a living, functioning document that has become a reference point for every major policy decision, a roadmap that sets the course for the agency’s future and provides a structure to weather the fiscal storm.

Located on the San Francisco Peninsula, the Transit District operates SamTrans bus service, Redi-Wheels paratransit service for persons with disabilities and funds shuttle services that link key employment centers with BART and Caltrain service. The Transit District also is the managing agency for the three-agency partnership that owns Caltrain, the Peninsula commuter rail system, and is the managing agency for the San Mateo County Transportation Authority, which administers revenue from a half-cent sales tax for transit and transportation programs.

The Transit District is more than 30 years old with a proud history of employee esprit and collegiality.

That asset – the commitment of employees to the District’s transit services and to its customers – became the centerpiece of what proved to be a bottom-up planning process.

Work on the plan began in 2007, as the darkening clouds gathered in the form of looming economic and California state budget crises.

The planning process began with a determination by executive management that the employees ought to be asked what they consider the District’s most important functions.

The result was a series of “Listening Sessions” to hear employee ideas about the Transit District’s priorities and areas for possible improvement. More than 75 people participated over several months in small sessions of four or five people. The sessions were moderated by members of the Agency Executive Team, but care was taken that no employee be in a session with his or her chief officer. Candor was the order of the day.

From the employees, clear themes emerged and, while there was a sense that the agency could be proud of its many accomplishments, it became evident that there was a need to develop a clear, unified mission.

Those sessions formed the framework for the organization of the continued planning process – a guide for the issues and concerns the District needed to address.

The following spring, the Board of Directors officially endorsed the development of the plan. Six key focus areas were identified: financial integrity, multimodal services, transportation and land use, customers, business practices and employees.

Financial integrity speaks to the need to look beyond balancing the annual budget to the improvement of the District’s long-term financial stability by addressing the structural deficit.

Multimodal services addresses the criticality of providing people with transportation options and the need to reinvent the District’s family services to meet the needs of evolving and expanding public expectations. Expanding integrated transportation services will require the District to solidify public and private partnerships and to establish new ones.

Making smart transportation investments is linked to focused growth, which is addressed in the transportation and land use focus area. The District will work to encourage appropriate land-use decisions that support development tied to transit services.

The customers focus area reflects why the District exists - to serve customers. This includes existing passengers and potential riders, as well as the communities in the District’s service area.

The business practices and employee focus areas address internal matters that set a high standard for responsible business practices and recognize that to serve external customers, there must be recognition of the needs of internal customers and systems in place that can allow them to do their work. While sustainable policies and practices will be established, the District also will advance enhanced technologies and procedures that maximize operational efficiencies. The employees are the backbone of the District and attracting and retaining quality employees is essential for growth and change.

Once the broad outlines of the plan were developed, the planners went back to the employees for more small-group sessions at which they were asked to reviews goals, initiatives and performance indicators within each category. They were asked to rank them in order of priority. Employees were chosen to participate according to their areas of expertise, so that those engaged in these structured conversations had a stake in the outcome.

But care also was taken to ensure that the process reflected a cross-section of all the major divisions in the Agency, from Operations to Finance, from Marketing to HR.

“This level of employee involvement was a critical hallmark of the effort and of the future success of the Strategic Plan as a guide,” said Board Chair Zoe Kersteen-Tucker. “Employee buy-in is essential for the plan to be meaningful.”

Having developed the plan internally, planners then determined to vet the plan with a wide spectrum of additional internal and external audiences – to guard against the historic flaw that a Strategic Plan be little more than insiders talking to themselves.

Presentations were given to internal groups such as safety committees and training classes, as well as to employees at the District’s two maintenance and operations facilities and its administrative office.

Given the chance to participate at a detailed level, the employees plunged in and provided an invigorating level of engagement that significantly influenced the development of the plan as a living document and not one more shelf-bound, dust-gathering report.

Rather than being resistant to change, employees felt change should be embraced, particularly in the focus areas of multimodal services and employees, categories that challenged the traditional status quo of how the Agency’s business had been done.

Since one of the goals in the multimodal services category was the reinvention of the District’s services, there was concern that this should not automatically translate to reductions in service and the loss of jobs, but instead focus on maintaining and improving the current high-quality standard of service – finding new ways to make the pie bigger, rather than fight over ways to slice the same pie thinner. There also was concern about the District’s long-term financial stability. Staff also felt that recruiting and retaining employees and investing in professional development would be a critical component to the plan’s success.

To test the plan with external audiences, staff made presentations to the District’s Citizens Advisory Committee, the association of city managers in San Mateo County, and other regional governing bodies with an interest in transportation issues. In addition, the plan was presented to the public at-large at a town hall meeting.

In fall 2008, the plan was ready for a final review by the Board of Directors at an off-site retreat where there could be minimal interruptions and heightened focus on a critical policy-level discussion. Partly because meeting space is at a premium in San Mateo County and partly to impress upon the Board that the time had arrived to face up to key, urgent and timely decisions, the retreat was held in a community room at a local cemetery.

With the board’s blessing and input, the time to move forward had arrived and the plan was officially adopted in October 2008.

The plan included a new vision for the agency that broadens its focus beyond operating transit and addressed sustainability: “The District is a mobility leader, providing transportation choices and a sustainable future that meets the needs of our diverse communities.”

Having engaged a wide range of internal and external interests in the preparation of a plan so that it assumed a dynamic air, the next steps necessary were to ensure that the plan was not set on a shelf to gather dust, but was integrated into the day-to-day working environment and immediate and long-term decision-making.

The plan was posted on the District’s Web site, and then each employee was given a copy of the plan.

Every employee also received, attached to the paycheck, a wallet-size card with the key focus areas and the vision. On the inside of the cards is a graphic depiction of the focus areas, formed in a circle to illustrate that each category leads to the next, interconnected, and interdependent.

General Manager/CEO Mike Scanlon joked that he might occasionally quiz employees in the hallway to make sure they were versed in the focus areas and the vision.

The graphic inside the cards was also reproduced on posters, which have been prominently displayed throughout the District’s facilities in common areas, meeting rooms, lunch rooms and hallways.

Then, as staff began wrestling with the economic downturn and state budget cuts in preparation for the FY2010 budget, each line item was reviewed against the Strategic Plan and managers were asked to indicate whether each budget request advanced or deterred the achievement of each focus area.

The Strategic Plan, designed to be a living document, is being put to the test every day, especially in times when financial issues would seem to urge grasping at any and all alternatives.

The District’s current fiscal issues bring into more immediate focus larger issues – the fundamental financial structure of the Agency, which has grown in business units in 30 years without an increase in dedicated revenue sources; the future of transit funding in the greater region; and the potential for a reinvention of the industry at large, driven by a White House administration eager to embrace mass transit and the authorization of a new vision for American transit as SAFETEA-LU runs its course.

In such uncertain times, the District will be faced with a journey through numerous expected and unexpected strategic and policy decisions.

Fortunately, this journey, demanded by the expediency of the times, will be guided by the touchstone of a Strategic Plan that is broad-based, broadly supported and expansive in its vision and its flexibility.

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Media Contact: Christine Dunn, 650.508.6238