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My community is in the process of creating a master plan. As director of a parks and recreation department in desperate need of facilities, how do I make my voice heard in this process without agitating other department heads?

Encourage and foster some citizen focus groups, and present comparisons of facility inventories of like or similar communities.

Your voice will be best heard if it is not your voice, but rather the voice of your citizens. Let citizen voices by your battle cry and the cause you represent. Your role in carrying the crafted and articulated needs of the citizenry forward is vital to the process. This strategy prevents “your” voice from becoming a personal or professional campaign.

I believe it is always important to justify our needs with facts and figures. Outlining how many programs and participants you have, addressing capacity issues, and detailing the aging or neglect of facilities (and providing photos) are great ways to begin to tell your story. If you can further identify specific needs you cannot meet because of lack of facilities, that helps even more.

It is absolutely critical that the master plan and the need for any facilities come from the citizen’s perspective. This means a lot of public input to identify needs, priorities and willingness to pay. Once you have this data, this should take some of the pressure off you.

We've found that a business plan, one that treats itself like a private venture and justifies all costs and proves profitability makes these projects happen. Show that the Master Plan will save cost, improve the tax base, improve life, generate things like tournaments. Use real numbers based upon real projects to show those $$$$s not the typical Chamber of commerce numbers that are hard to take seriously.