If it works in baseball it can work for city government.
Starkville officials are expecting increased efficiency to save the city more than the $5,000 fee it has contracted to pay annually for the municipal version of sabermetrics, a method of managing used in professional baseball based on objective statistics.
The Starkville version comes via a deal with the International City/County Management Association (ICMA), a company which collects raw data on municipal services from 169 local governments across the nation, compiles the information and returns it in the form of a report for the purpose of performance measurement.
The report is intended to offer cities a scientific glimpse at the efficiency of their services, but ICMA also makes each city”s information available to the other municipalities in its nationwide consortium for comparison.
“If a community is spending half of what we”re spending to get a ton of solid waste to the landfill,” said Mayor Parker Wiseman drawing an example, “I want to know how they”re doing it. They could be doing something programatic that hasn”t occurred to us.”
Because each state and region of the country presents unique challenges and advantages, whether through geography, climate or state laws, Wiseman said Starkville is fortunate to be joined by Southaven and Horn Lake as the first cities in Mississippi to contract with ICMA.
Wiseman is an ICMA veteran of sorts, having spent a year working for the company while in grad school. He pitched the idea of joining the consortium to the board of aldermen, which approved the contract as part of the city”s Fiscal Year 2011 budget in September. He said the report from ICMA will be public information so citizens can see and better understand the city”s efforts at increasing efficiency.
Chief Administrative Officer Lynn Spruill submitted Starkville”s first annual round of data to ICMA March 15 after collecting the raw numbers on Fiscal Year 2010 from city department heads. The first eye-opener, she said, was the number of questions on ICMA”s extensive questionnaire she had to leave blank because the city doesn”t keep records on particular items.
“One of the most difficult ones to manage is data on fleet management because each department has its own set of vehicles,” said Spruill. “(ICMA) has categories we don”t necessarily use. They designate Light 1, Light 2, Heavy Vehicles, Public Safety, Solid Waste Packers, categories we haven”t broken out and captured data on. Also, we don”t count them by hours used. In some cases, ours are so old we don”t have working odometers so we can”t capture mileage.”
The questionnaire”s indication of how much data the city lacks has given Spruill her first action item: a daily driver inspection form for each city vehicle which will record a vehicle”s mileage, gas level, oil level, tire pressure, etc.
“That”s a good piece of information to track for insurance purposes, mileage purposes and generally how we spend public dollars,” she said.
Spruill is confident the city can increase its fiscal efficiency with the help of ICMA”s report enough to cover the $5,000 price tag. But an equal return, she said, will be the improvement in city services to citizens.
“There will be incremental benefits you can”t attach a dollar to. But the level of efficiency and professionalism and those kind of intangibles have great value,” she said.
ICMA will process Starkville”s information and return its first report in several months. Wiseman said the city will act on any usable information in the first report, but greater returns will come after several years once the city has adjusted to collecting all the data requested by ICMA.
A city staff retreat is scheduled for April 8, at which point Wiseman and Spruill will discuss the first round of data collection with department heads and ways to improve the next round.
Jason Browne was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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