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The City Council has set the goal of making Ventura a national model of accountable government by tracking our tangible progress toward achieving the 10 Strategic Visions in our 2005 General Plan. Each month, the City Manager and Department heads review two sets of “performance measures” to closely track progress. Each quarter, these are reviewed by the City Council in open session. The first set, Tier One, cover the numeric measures on everything from our crime rate to sewer line interruptions. The second set, Goals and Controls, track specific projects.
The City measures their “outcomes” based on both quantitative data as well as customer satisfaction. That’s why they do an Annual Citizen Survey to ask opinions on city services. They conduct a separate Communications Survey to gauge how well they are communicating with citizens and look for ways to improve.
Only a handful of cities in California track and report such a comprehensive set of objective measures. As with public schools, the Ventura City Council believes their citizens expect and need to know how their tax dollars are spent and how the community is progressing in achieving the Ventura Vision.
Ventura’s City Council adopted the Green Initiative in 2007. The Green Initiative is the first of many steps toward the City’s goal of becoming a national model for sustainability. Since its adoption, the City has completed a Green House Gas Inventory which was certified and registered by the California Climate Action Registry, as well as joined the Sierra Club Cool Cities Program and ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability.