Glendale city website features new online portal for stats, performance numbers

A new feature on the city’s website displays key statistics such as how the city is spending its money and whether the local police and fire departments are meeting their response-time goals.

The “Measuring Performance” page can be accessed by clicking on “Transparency” at the bottom of the city of Glendale’s home page. From there, visitors can choose to see breakdowns of the budget, economic development and public safety.

In the budget section, visitors can view spending statistics in areas such as the public works department and administration.

“The goal is to pull out the key metrics that are the most important to the community and to the departments, to make them easy to use and easy to understand,” said Brian Ganley, the city’s chief information officer, during a recent meeting of the Glendale City Council.

After clicking on the “Safe and Healthy Community” tab, individual statistics are displayed in categories such as how long it takes for the fire department to pick up a 911 call or how long it takes for a fire truck to arrive on the scene.

With each of the stats, there is an indicator showing whether a goal has been achieved for improvement in that area.

“You are what the scoreboard says you are and you have to get better from there,” said City Manager Scott Ochoa.

According to the data, which is current as of last December, it took firefighters an average of 5.3 minutes to respond to an emergency call, while a medical call took 4.5 minutes — both are considered goals that were met.

However, the fire department is still working to cut its response time for service calls to five minutes.

Other figures are posted as well, such as the average of 257.58 property crimes that were reported monthly in 2014, a vast majority of which were petty thefts, according to the data.

City Councilwoman Laura Friedman was receptive to the new addition on the city’s website because she said it’s easier than digging up the statistics by flipping through documents.

However, down the road, residents should be able to see the numbers in context, she said.

“We don’t have the true averages of other cities of our size, so we have something to compare those metrics to,” Friedman said.

As for the future of the “Measuring Performance” page, there will be updates with new data in the future, Ganley said.

“You’re going to see more buttons, more tiles on this website and more supporting data within each one,” he said.