City of Tacoma 2011 Performance Management Report

The City of Tacoma’s 2011 Performance Management Report to Citizens is now available online. The report includes statistics on Tacoma’s performance over the last five years in selected categories, measuring the efforts the City is making towards meeting the Council’s three strategic goals.

A safe, clean and attractive community
The report shows nuisance complaints up significantly over the last five years (though down slightly against 2010). Violent crime and property crime, on the other hand, are both down from 2007 levels, and down from 2010’s numbers. The Fire Department’s on time response rate is also at a high for the five years covered by the report.

A diverse, productive and sustainable economy
This was bound to be a tough category, as it includes unemployment numbers. Tacoma’s unemployment rate has more than doubled from 4.7% in 2007 to 9.5% in 2011, but that is down from the reported high of 9.9% in 2010. The total number of jobs in Tacoma is down, but the net number of businesses in the city is actually up, with the number of new businesses opening holding more or less steady with 2007, and the number of businesses closing down notably from the previous years’ numbers. The report also makes note of several of the City’s economic development programs: alternative transportation programs, Spaceworks, and the Subarea Plan and EIS programs currently underway in the MLK and South Downtown neighborhoods.

A high-performing, open and engaged government
In this third category, the City reports positive changes for 2011 as part of an on-going trend: although public disclosure requests are up steeply to 1,147 in 2011 from 469 in 2007, the median number of days it took the City to fulfill those requests is down from 9 to 3 last year. The report also touts improvements in environmentally friendly practices, and new electronic communications with citizens.

Sounds good, but if we’re going to talk about “high-performing, open and engaged government” in Tacoma in 2011, there may be an elephant in the room shaped suspiciously like a City Manager/budget situation… What do you think? What’s your assessment of the City’s performance in 2011?

View the report at www.cityoftacoma.org/performance (Performance Reporting for Citizens).