Democracy on the Front Lines
City Administrator’s Blog
Walter Denton
August 31, 2010
It is pretty easy to determine whether a business is successful: its profit margin and share price are accurate indicators of a company’s productivity. It is not so easy for a local government. How do you know if the City of O’Fallon is efficient? How do you know if the City of O’Fallon is providing effective services to residents?
Cities do not have profit margins to calculate success but we can measure our processes and effectiveness. I mention this because our semi-annual Performance Report is now online. You may or may not be aware that City staff regularly prepares a Performance Report to the City Council that provides information on the operations and activities within the organization. Each department submits statistics on how they are providing services to residents. Click here to view the report.
The reports are an effort to show the City Council what the departments are doing on a day-to-day basis and to provide baseline information for staff to make decisions on service delivery. As a public agency spending taxpayer money, it is important that we operate as efficiently as possible and show that O’Fallon residents are getting value for the taxes they pay.
This Performance Report features the first full year of the City’s “Performance Dashboard” with the purpose of defining the top twelve indicators that demonstrate the organization’s performance. The 12 Performance Dashboard measures are:
1. Citizens perception of value for City taxes paid
2. Crime Rate (Part 1 Total) per 1,000 residents
3. EMS response time from call to arrival
4. Response time for first fire suppression unit on scene
5. Water availability to customers
6. Total number of recreation program and park users
7. Library patron count
8. Bond rating
9. Overall appearance of O’Fallon
10. Overall impression of City employees by citizens
11. Percentage of City roads rated fair or better
12. Percentage of News Releases printed in the media
In addition, the Management Team developed a “Balanced Scorecard” of performance measurements that outline the most important metrics in the following categories: Operations, Finances, Employees, and Citizens.
As in previous reports, data is included from our participation in a nationwide program called the Center for Performance Measurement that compiles and distributes reports on service efficiency for more than 250 cities across the country. O’Fallon is part a St. Louis metro consortium of 13 cities that have joined the Center for Performance Measurement.
Particularly in this era of a poor economy and declining tax revenues, I believe these performance measures are powerful tools in providing services to our residents and will assist staff in making operational and budget decisions.
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