Grand Rapids Issues Fiscal Year 2020 Performance Report

Press release from the City of Grand Rapids:

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – Grand Rapids reported positive progress in the first year of its four-year strategic plan. This progress comes in the face of significant and unanticipated challenges presented by a global pandemic, economic recession and nationwide calls for immediate and significant policing reform.

“While these issues may have dominated the headlines and placed new demands on City services, we’ve been able to use the strategic plan as our guide in decision-making,” said City Manager Mark Washington. “This has uniquely positioned us to lean in on these challenges while still making progress on the issues we prioritized in 2019.”

Washington and City staff outlined the progress the City made responding to these events while working steadily to elevate the quality of life in Grand Rapids by providing quality public services throughout FY2020 (July 1, 2019 through June 30, 2020). The City’s FY2020 Performance Management Report to the City Commission illustrates the progress made facing these trials and the key accomplishments achieved under the first year of the City’s four-year strategic plan. View the PowerPoint presentation HERE.

Washington told the commission that the report identifies key accomplishments and lists them by COVID-19 response and recovery, objective and alignment with the City’s values.

“Fiscal Year 2020 brought a significant amount of unanticipated work due to COVID-19,” Washington said. “Staff created FY2020 plans last fall having no way of knowing how much their plans would be impacted by the tremendous amount of additional work that COVID created. This report demonstrates the amazing work staff achieved in response to COVID-19, but also illustrates how much we were able to collectively achieve even during a pandemic.”

The report is the City’s first formal annual performance management report. It comes following the creation of a four-year strategic plan, a performance management office, a FY2021 prioritization workshop, a FY2020 mid-year performance management update and passage of two budgets aligned to the strategic plan (FY2020 and FY2021).

The FY2020 Performance Management Report includes:

• Measures for 21 key metrics
• Quantitative assessment of qualitative performance
• List of key accomplishments achieved, and honors received from across all City departments.

The information is organized by COVID-19 Response and Recovery, 29 objectives within six strategic priorities and six core values.

The City used two different software tools to track performance. First, it used Socrata Open Performance to create a Key Metric Dashboard to track the quantitative metrics from the plan. In fall 2019, Commission selected 37 of the 140 out of the plan to include on the dashboard. Staff built out 21 and will continue to add more. One of its commitments under the plan was to disaggregate all data by race, ethnicity, gender identify and geography to the extent possible. The Demographics Statement outlines how the City is working to disaggregate data.

Each dashboard metric includes:

• Metric name
• Most recent data point/measure
• Timeframe for the metric
• Status (goal met, near goal, measuring (goal not established yet) or goal not reached)
• Goal

Additional details:

• Performance over time (up to 5 years of historic data when available)
• Source data (raw data for all metrics available for download)
• About the data (where does the data come from, how is it collected, who collects the data and how often is the data collected)
• Why it matters
• Impacts since March 2020 Stay at Home Order (impacts to the data due to COVID-19 or civil unrest)
• Demographics disaggregated (data broken down by race, ethnicity, gender and geography where available and relevant)

The City began implementing the second software tool, Envisio, a web-based platform that allows staff to identify, track and measure qualitative performance under the plan. In fall 2019, all departments identified the key activities they work on in alignment to strategic priorities, objectives and strategies. In addition, every department selected projects they felt represented the best examples of core values across the City. Staff identified whether each activity was on track, had some disruption or significant disruption or was completed. The software then aggregated all of these, applying equal weight to every activity. The percentage completion for each activity was also aggregated to give a total percent completion at the objective and priority level. This information is included in the circle charts provided throughout the report.

Alison Waske Sutter, sustainability and performance management officer, said while the City continues to refine how to identify, measure and report on progress, “I’m proud of staff’s commitment to measuring performance under the plan. Some projects take more than one year to complete. This report demonstrates the work we are doing to be more strategic, transparent and accountable with respect to the desired outcomes established in our strategic plan.”

Washington concluded the presentation by stating, “This strategic plan is our North Star and it has served us well both in time of pandemic and before. It has helped us be resilient and innovative in our response and recovery actions. Every day municipal employees rise to the occasion to provide services that are vital to our community. I would like to thank community members and staff for being resolute during these challenging times. Leadership shown by our elected officials allows the staff to execute the strategic priorities and objectives in a manner that is consistent with our values and mission of elevating the quality of life through excellent City services.

This press release was produced by the City of Grand Rapids. The views expressed are the author's own.