LTBB Master Land Use Plan - Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa ...

GOVERNMENT PROGRAM DATA – FINANCIAL STRATEGIC PLANS
In 2001 and 2002, as the LTBB Tribal Government was completing a multi-year project of
department-level and overall Tribal Strategic Plan development, implementation steps for many of
those plans revolved around the relationships between program needs and the financial ability to
meet those needs. Therefore, as a final step in the initial Strategic Plan project, each program
developed Financial Strategic Plans, highlighting both staffing and capital improvement needs.
While the plans served their own purposes, these capital improvement need lists were then
utilized by the staff team assembling this document to create a core list of tribal needs related to land
acquisition and building construction. The raw data from these surveys was re-categorized and
related with individual surveys submitted by each department for the purposes of this plan. These
additional surveys dealt only with land acquisition, however.
The result of this effort became a “prompting list”, as described later in this chapter, that was
used at the initial public meetings to generate participant reaction and further input.
CITIZEN INPUT FROM PUBLIC MEETINGS
For several years the Planning Department of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians
has been involved in gathering Tribal Member input for planning and development activities. These
have included two public hearings early in the development of the Wah-Wahs-Noo-De-ke housing
site, and numerous visits to concentrations of tribal population around the state in preparation for
the LTBB Strategic Plan project.
In most, but not all of these instances, the Planning Department elected to utilize a form of
Nominal Group Technique or NGT to promote and manage group input. This method is a
structured process that identifies and ranks the major problems or issues that need addressing. For
this method to be a success, a minimum group size is advantageous, but this requirement has not
always been met.
In the context of the LTBB Master Land Use Plan, the public participation issues can be
narrowed to three open areas of concern. They are, in no specific order,
For what purposes should the tribe obtain land?;
Of all the functions the Government needs to perform for tribal members, where would land be
ranked?; and
Given a fixed annual amount of money for land acquisition, how much would you devote in
actual dollars?
It is from these basic questions that the public participation strategy was generated.
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