The Decatur Minute

The International City/County Management Association (ICMA)  and National Research Center, Inc. (NRC), recognized 19 communities for their use of citizen surveys to influence service quality at the 95^th Annual ICMA Conference in Montreal, Canada.   Two sets of awards were awarded, one for service excellence and one for significant improvement in service.

All of the communities that recieved awards participate in The National Citizen Survey^TM, which enables local governments to gather citizen data on budgeting, goal setting, performance measurement, and program planning at a low cost.  Decatur will undertake the survey again in Winter 2010.  You can view the 2008 results here.

Decatur received the Voice of the People Transformation Award for improvements in the areas of Code Enforcement and Street Sweeping, as well as the Voice of the People Excellence Award because it had a service quality rating that was in the top three among all eligible jurisdictions in 2008.  To qualify for this award these communities also had to be in the top ten percent among over 500 jurisdictions in the NRC database of citizen surveys.

ICMA Executive Director Robert J. O’Neill and NRC President Thomas I. Miller recognized each jurisdiction at ICMA’s 95^th Annual Conference.  They emphasized the importance of managers regularly monitoring the performance of their communities, and how resident perspectives can provide critical management information. “Communities who incorporate citizen feedback into their planning process, like the winners here today, are able to achieve higher levels of performance because they have real data to support their priorities,” said Miller.