Copyright 2005 Chattanooga Publishing Company  
Chattanooga Times Free Press (Tennessee)

September 19, 2005 Monday

City tallies its success on goals

By Herman Wang; Staff Writer

SECTION: LOCAL NEWS; Pg. B1

In 2004, Chattanooga experienced a 26 percent reduction in crime, hosted more than 176,000 recreation center visitors and responded to 80 percent of housing and litter complaints within goal times, according to a report published on the city's Web site.

Statistics such as these, officials say, not only give residents an up-date on how city services are responding to their needs, but they provide department heads and managers with quantifiable performance measures.

The city's 2005 Performance Report, which tracks statistics from 2004 during former Mayor Bob Corker's term, was published in June.

"As important as it is that crime was down and performance improved in a bunch of areas, the main thing is that the city is beginning to report this information to the public," said David Eichenthal, who was the city's chief financial officer when the report statistics were compiled.

"This sort of data and information allow the mayor, the council and administrators to look at it and see where we're meeting goals today and maybe where they need to up the ante," he said. "It creates a resident-government dialogue."

For instance, according to the report, the Public Works department set a goal of fulfilling 90 percent of citywide customer service requests on time but accomplished only 86.8 percent on time in 2004. The department did fulfill 96 percent of its codes and inspection requests on time in 2004, surpassing its goal of 90 percent.

Also, an October 2004 survey of residents who requested services through the city's 311 call center found 78 percent of them were "very satisfied" or "satisfied" with the work performed by city departments, the report stated. Ten percent reported the work was not completed as requested, and 12 percent were not satisfied.

Daisy Madison, the city's current chief financial officer, said the report creates accountability in city government.

"The purpose of the report is to let the residents know about those areas that we feel (are) of interest to them in terms of government performances," she said. "We want to get input from residents as to whether or not the measures we're reporting on are the ones they're truly interested in."

The city received a grant from the National Center for Civic Innovation to compile and publish the statistics. Chattanooga is one of 27 local governments to receive the institute's 2004 "trailblazer" award for innovation in performance and performance reporting.

Under Mr. Corker, the city instituted a program called chattanoogaRESULTS in October 2003, where department administrators met monthly with the mayor and his staff to evaluate how their departments were performing.

Current Mayor Ron Littlefield has continued chattanoogaRESULTS, and the 42-page 2005 Performance Report is the first of annual reports to be published on data compiled from the program. Mr. Littlefield retained five of eight department administrators from Mr. Corker's staff and added a new Department of Education, Arts and Culture.

Donna Kelley, personnel administrator under both mayors, said the program has helped department heads effectively target areas for improvement.

"It's helped departments focus on common goals," she said. "From a performance management aspect, it's excellent. Seeing results is always great."

E-mail Herman Wang at hwang@timesfreepress.com