Emphasizing outcomes improving City performance
Pavement condition added as new performance measure
Brian Coddington, Communications Director, 509.625.6740
Monday, May 19, 2014 at 11:30 a.m.
Quarterly performance indicators (PDF 509 KB) released today show that the City’s emphasis on outcomes has delivered improvement in several priority areas, including public safety, customer service delivery, connection to resources and resource management.
Notably, violent crime was down during the first quarter more than 16 percent when compared to the same period a year ago. Residential burglary also declined for the third consecutive quarter. Permit plan review times dropped and My Spokane customer service assistance rates improved.
“We are focused on outcomes to deliver improvement in customer service,” said Mayor David Condon. “We’ve aligned to citizen priorities and the community is realizing the results.”
Performance measures are reviewed and published quarterly. Evaluations are increasingly emphasizing outcomes over strictly operational measures.
Quarterly performance data, when comparing the first quarter this year to the same period the previous year, shows the City is:
- Driving down crime
- Violent crime incidents were down more than 16 percent overall
- Residential burglary was down 32 percent
- Vehicle theft was down more than 21 percent
- Improving customer service
- Short route plan reviews times are down to 12 days
- My Spokane customer service area inquiries were resolved on first contact 95 percent of the time
- Quickly getting help to people who need it
- Call were dispatched within 60 seconds about 96 percent of the time
- Target arrival times for priority fire call and on a structure fire call were met or exceeded more than 90 percent of the time
- Responded to life-threatening medical calls within the 8-minute, 30-second goal 90 percent of the time
- Met regularly with the Fire Task Team to discuss strategies to evolve the fire service model to better align response to citizen needs
- Connecting people to services that make a difference
- Connected homeless people to service and resources that lead to stable housing and increased financial stability 89 percent of the time
- Hot Spotters team connected homeless person to housing leads 40 percent of the time, reducing emergency, health and public safety responses (goal of 30%)
- Proactively maintaining the city’s assets
- Added a new performance measure to evaluate the pavement condition of arterials and local access streets
- Street Bond work over the past 10 years has helped the City maintain on average a fairly good network of streets
Even with the progress, there is still room for improvement.
As one example, code enforcement cases are being resolved within 30 days just under 70 percent of the time; the goal is 80 percent or greater. Even so, the rate of voluntary compliance remains close the goal of 80 percent.
