City of Southlake

Performance Initiatives

In the City of Southlake results matter. Over the past several years, City staff has been working to improve organizational performance in some very specific ways.

Transition Plan
In March of 2005 the City Council adopted a transition plan recommended by the City Manager to guide the organization through needed changes to address organizational challenges.  The initiatives were designed to improve management systems and workforce competency, as well as promote greater accountability for all employees. 

Since then the City Council and staff have worked together to develop a strategic management system to align decision-making and resource allocation.  Feeding the master plan are departmental business plans, executive team performance contracts which outline expectations and levels of performance and constantly evolving performance measures (known internally as key accountability indicators or "k.a.i.s") to assess the quality and quantity of the work performed. 

Financial Stewardship 
Proper financial stewardship is important.  The City's target budget system (a modified zero-based budgeting technique) provides the means for controlling incremental growth in budget line items without proper justification.  It improves the rigor of the budget review process.

The City is also committed to structural balance with the budget to prevent "drawing down" fund balances to balance the operating budget.  If excess revenue accumulates, the cash is used for non-recurring, one-time expenses like capital projects.  One of the benefits of this approach is that it can minimize City borrowing for important projects.  For FY 2008 almost half of the capital improvement program will funded with cash rather than debt. 

An important measure of the City's financial health is the rating given to the City by bond rating agencies.  Fitch Ratings, Standard & Poor's, and Moody's Investor Services have all very favorable ratings at "AA" (Aa2 by Moody's). Their analysis determines the City's credit worthiness for potential investors including the areas of management, environmental, and financial systems and performance.  

Best Practices
The quest for high quality performance requires the City to manage its resources in a way which will utilize best industry practices to ensure Southlake residents receive best in class City services.  The City has conducted management studies of the Departments of Public Safety, Public Works, and Community Services; and has fully implemented the noted recommendations.  The City has also sought to improve the way we conduct businesses by improving processes through "lean" work sessions.

Measuring performance requires data and efficient operations require good systems.  To that end, the City has invested in and is currently implementing new foundational software to guide our decision making and reduce work flows.   

Understanding What Citizens Need
The City is also using another powerful tool, a bi-annual citizen survey to help understand key community issues.  The 2008 results are now being reviewed by the executive team and are being worked in to this year's work plans and the work plans for next year.

City of Southlake Core Values
One of the most important parts of the transition plan includes the adoption of five key values: Integrity, Innovation Accountability, Commitment to Excellence and Teamwork (I2ACT).  The idea was to take a strategic approach to how work is accomplished each day.  In order to keep these values at the forefront each value has been assigned a staff team to help City employees "operationalize" I2ACT.

Awards and Recognition
So how are we doing? The listing below shows how the City and our staff have been recognized for their efforts over the past few years.

 

 

 

 

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