Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Performance Metrics topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Boca Raton council reviews proposed KPIs to measure progress on 2024–25 strategic plan
Summary
City staff proposed a set of key performance indicators — from NIBRS crime data to tree-canopy and transit ridership measures — to give the city objective benchmarks for the 2024–25 strategic plan; councilmembers praised the effort but raised questions about data sources, benchmarks, and how to account for nonresident event attendance.
Deputy City Manager Mr. Lukasick presented staff’s proposed key performance indicators (KPIs) to the Boca Raton City Council workshop on Oct. 7, laying out measures intended to track progress across safety, quality of life, financial sustainability, services, economy, transportation and growth-management priorities.
"What gets measured gets done," Lukasick told the council as he introduced a reporting structure that will use objective data to evaluate how the city is meeting its strategic focus areas. He said staff wants measures that are easy to collect and manage so the city can monitor performance and adjust strategies when necessary.
For public safety, staff recommended three high-level metrics: crime incidents reported using the FBI’s NIBRS system, a citizen-safety perception question in a January survey (staff suggested a 90–95 percent top-tier benchmark), and counts of pedestrian- and bicycle-involved crashes tied to the city's Vision Zero goals. "NIBRS is far more granular," Lukasick said, adding it will allow internal trend comparisons even though not many Florida communities have adopted the standard.
Councilmembers pushed staff to add context to those raw counts. "It might be worth checking near misses," said Ms. Nikles, noting that many dangerous encounters go unreported; Mr. Reger suggested mapping localized conflict points so a citywide average does not obscure trouble spots.
On quality of life, staff proposed tracking tree-canopy increases, a perception question about sense of community, and the number of city-sponsored events and attendees. Several councilmembers warned that event attendance figures can be skewed by nonresidents and suggested supplementing event counts with a household question on the perception survey or ticketing data where applicable.
For financial sustainability, Lukasick proposed comparing recurring revenue with recurring expenditures, measuring fund balance as a percentage of operating budget (the standard benchmark is typically cited as 25–30 percent) and monitoring the city’s bond rating. Council members asked for clarity about recent fund-balance numbers; staff said the fund balance has been "a little bit above 30 percent" in recent reporting.
Measures for world-class services included the percentage of CIP projects completed on time and on budget, response times on the SeeClickFix platform and a customer-service rating from the perception survey. Council members noted some reported service items are outside city control (for example, utility-owned streetlights) and asked that follow-up steps be recorded when a report is forwarded to another agency.
On economic indicators, staff suggested tracking new businesses, business retention and new jobs, with possible data sources including business tax receipts and state reemployment filings. Council members encouraged the city to explore confidential Department of Economic Opportunity data and to add minimal onboarding fields to the business tax receipt process to capture job counts where feasible.
Transportation measures proposed included mode-share estimates (auto miles vs. other modes), transit ridership (BocaConnect and shuttle services), quick-build safety projects and average level-of-service at key intersections. Council members debated how LOS (level of service) can be reconciled with Vision Zero safety goals and recommended layering pedestrian- and bicycle-demand data (for example, push-button activations or camera counts) onto LOS measurements.
Several council members urged staff to ensure the KPIs come paired with clear context and comparators — per-capita or per-mile normalizations for crash counts, for example — and to track program-specific details such as permitting throughput, recreation-program participation, and whether business-focused surveys should be run separately from household surveys.
The council did not set final benchmarks at the workshop; Lukasick said staff will refine metrics and data-collection methods and bring recommendations back for further discussion. Mayor Singer and other members emphasized the need to avoid selecting metrics that skew staff focus or yield misleading conclusions without context.
The workshop discussion moves the city closer to an instrumented reporting structure for the strategic plan, with staff to return with more detail on comparators, data availability and draft benchmarks.
