City Issues First Performance Scorecard

Budget and Evaluation - July 2, 2007
Contact: Ann Jones, 727-2639

The city has released its first Performance Scorecard reviewing the city’s delivery of core services to city residents, including public safety, sanitation, transportation, community and economic development, and leisure services.

The scorecard includes measures for the 2005-2006 fiscal year and mid-year accomplishments for the 2006-2007 fiscal year. The city’s performance was determined through the use of benchmark comparisons with other peer cities, efficiency and effectiveness measures, and data from a telephone survey of citizens conducted in October 2006.

For fiscal year 2005-2006, the scorecard found that the Fire Department slightly exceeded its goal of containing 70 percent of fires to the room of origin but that it missed by 5 seconds its goal of responding to fire calls within four minutes. The Police Department responded to high-priority calls in less than four minutes, more than two minutes less than the national standard of a six-minute response.

The Utilities Division met its goal of complying with 100 percent of federal and state drinking water standards; Sanitation met its goal of missing less than one percent of garbage collections per month; Transportation met its goal to keep average wait time at traffic signals to less than 30 seconds; the Streets Division exceeded its goal of repairing 80 percent of reported potholes within 24 hours; and Inspections exceeded its goal of issuing building permits within three days but slightly missed its goal of performing 90 percent of construction inspections within 24 hours.

Housing/Neighborhood Services slightly exceeded by four days its goal of bringing environmental code violations into compliance within 27 days, but it did better in dealing with abandoned vehicles, bringing them into compliance in an average of 18 days, three fewer than the goal of 21 days. Recreation removed 97.9 percent of hazardous trees from city property within 10 days, slightly worse than its goal of 100 percent.

In the citizen telephone survey, city residents gave eight of the 10 city departments included in the poll a grade of B-plus or B. The Fire Department received a grade of A-minus, and the Transportation Department received a grade of B-minus.

In a cover letter forwarding the report to Mayor Allen Joines and the City Council, City Manager Lee Garrity said that department heads will develop strategies to improve services that did not receive an "A." An action plan that summarizes these strategies will be forwarded to the City Council for review and will be incorporated into department work plans.

Garrity called this inaugural effort "a starting point as we continue to discuss performance measurement."

The entire performance report, including complete results of the citizen satisfaction survey, are available online:

 Performance Scorecard

Citizen Satisfaction Survey Results is under Reports on the Information, Plans, maps, and Reports page.