Today’s Topics: Accountability and Celebrating Downtown

If you come downtown this weekend to celebrate Memorial Day, which I hope you will, you’ll probably notice a number of improvements.  I would like to express my most sincere appreciation to Lamar Advertising for DONATING four billboards to the City to help promote downtown events.  We also have new grant-funded solar- power mid-block crosswalks downtown – and of course, the flowers planted by hundreds of volunteers on Pride Day and the donor-funded flower baskets sponsored by Main Street Elyria.  I hope you’ll join us for the following festivities and celebrations beginning with the Elyria High School Pioneer Marching Band Appreciation Day Celebration this Friday, May 24^th on Ely Square from 4:30 – 9:00pm and the Memorial Day Parade on Monday!  A pancake breakfast is also served that morning at St. Andrews church downtown.  (Please scroll down for Performance Audit Question/Answer) 

Carol: How do you plan on holding the City more accountable to the taxpayers?

Great question Carol.  I am a true believer in cost-benefit analysis of services, re-bidding contracts to make sure the City is getting the most for its dollar, prioritizing services and resources based on safety first, and weighing and balancing the wants and needs of the community by engaging citizens in processes that provide feedback to the City in its decision-making.  In other words, we want to be able to offer citizens what they want and are willing to pay for, so one of the challenges we have as an administration is to find simple ways to share information and give people viable choices based on limited resources. 

For example, I personally would love to open all four of our neighborhood pools. 

Unfortunately, even if we allocated funds to repair two of the pools that are out of service because of disrepair, at present the City does not have the money to operate them.  What good would it do to fix pools that we can’t afford to operate?  You can’t have pools without lifeguards and other personnel.  How we use our neighborhood parks will be an issue that we ask residents to weigh in on during an upcoming community dialogue session later this year to update the 2015 Plan.     

The City is already developing a process to update the Elyria 2015 Plan that includes issues identification, best practices inclusion, preferred future scenario development with options that include costs and benefits, and extensive citizen feedback.  The Plan update process will be completed in two phases, with Phase I completion in November 2013 and Phase II completion in November 2014.  The plan will be augmented with an accompanying Economic Development Plan, updated Land Use Plan, and Updated Thoroughfare Plan.  The updated strategic plan will include goals, desired outcomes, and strategies to achieve the outcomes.  The process will set priorities and the results will be aligned with the 2013 and 2014 budgeting process.  Outcomes will be measured and communicated to the public on the City’s website via a City Report Card that is backed by a formal, city-wide performance management system. 

The City is also in the process of examining a variety of measurement systems including CitiStat, a Balanced Scorecard Model and others, and associated software applications that can support the various systems.  It is the goal of the City to develop and implement a comprehensive measurement system by the end of 2014.