Interim Portland Parks and Recreation Director Sonia Schmansky and stakeholders from the Portland Parks Foundation on Thursday presented a draft key performance indicator dashboard designed to track the newly approved five‑year parks levy, which funds operations through fiscal 2031 and a modest amount of capital repair.

"This is the beginning," Schmansky said. "We're very happy to keep meeting with you this week, next week, next month, next year." She told the committee the dashboard will launch reporting in July and that a proposed final list will be sent to council in writing by the end of the year.

The dashboard is organized around roughly a dozen high‑level measures that staff and stakeholders said should be linked to outcome goals rather than stand‑alone activity counts. Examples discussed include:

• Percentage of operations funded by the parks levy (year‑over‑year trend requested by stakeholders).
• Tree metrics (number of park trees receiving proactive maintenance, trees planted in priority neighborhoods, survival rates).
• Neighborhood park maintenance and cleanliness (park inspection scores and complementary resident survey results, plus a proposed metric for the percentage of park ranger calls addressed).
• Capital projects map and status for maintenance investments funded by the levy.
• Program and access metrics (average program fill rate, percent of participants using access discounts and demographic disaggregation by age and district).

Jessica Green of the Portland Parks Foundation summarized stakeholder feedback, saying groups asked for clearer links between metrics and levy outcomes, callouts that explain results, a QR code or link to further detail, and clear labeling of which measures have historic data versus which are new.

Councilors pressed on several topics. Councilor Ryan and others asked why the dashboard showed actuals rather than targets and suggested adding targets and sub‑indicators to help drive improvement. Councilors also urged more district‑level disaggregation and asked that equity be visible both geographically and across user groups.

"We want to show not just activity, but activity and impact against a target or a goal," Schmansky said. Staff confirmed that some baselines exist in prior years' data (e.g., a fiscal‑year baseline referenced in levy materials) and that additional level‑of‑service work and audits are planned to define concrete targets in coordination with council.

On wildfire‑related work, the presenters said stakeholders requested something beyond a dollar figure — a placeholder metric remains under development that will aim to capture outcomes rather than only spending. Staff also agreed on the desirability of an interactive online dashboard to allow users to disaggregate by district, race/ethnicity or other demographic categories.

Next steps: staff said a written draft of the KPI dashboard will be provided to council by the end of the year, data collection would begin in July of the next reporting year, and bureaus will return with further refinements, baselines and proposed targets in subsequent reports.