The Planning and Parks Committee on July 21 endorsed a staff plan to produce standardized monthly reports combining police activity, code enforcement and municipal court data to show both short-term and year-to-date trends.

Why it matters: Council members said consistent, longitudinal data will make it easier to explain enforcement activity to constituents, detect trends and assess whether staffing and procedures are meeting community expectations.

City Administrator Lee outlined the proposed format: monthly and year-to-date tallies for reported violations, active investigations, corrected and invalid reports, inspections, court convictions, new tickets, summonses filed, warrants issued and closed cases. The report will also include a concise executive summary explaining notable month-to-month changes and high-level trends by category (traffic, code enforcement, general ordinance violations, domestic assault).

"We're almost trying to mimic this kind of longitudinal way of looking at the data for also code enforcement and court reporting," City Administrator Lee said. Chair Farmer and others said the format is intended to give councilors a quick but consistent window into activity across departments.

Committee members discussed confidentiality and legal limits on public detail. Staff said reports would avoid publishing personally identifiable details and would focus on neighborhood- or ward-level summaries and case counts. The prosecuting attorney had recommended additional clarity on the court-flow information that staff should provide to improve the court’s ability to show enforcement history in hearings.

Action and vote: a committee member moved to advance the standardized reporting approach and for staff to begin distributing the new reports in August; the motion was supported and carried. Staff will attach the new reports to the City Administrator report and post them with council materials.

Discussion vs. decision: committee approved implementing the reporting template and asked staff to coordinate with police, courts and code enforcement on specific fields and presentation.

What’s next: staff will finalize the report fields, pilot the format with August data and circulate it to council as an attachment to the CA report. The committee asked for an executive summary line for any month-to-month anomalies and for staff to note if data are unavailable from external partners.