Agenda - Parks and Recreation Commission - 01/08/2015

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Strategies to I mprove Communities Cross - cutting Management for Livability While more and more local governments seek to create livable communities, the management tool they most often rely on is an engine comprising individual departments, each charged with providing targeted services, like police, library, parks, economic development, streets and many more. As much as the directors of these departments sit together at the executive table, they also confront unique service delivery issues that force a focused rather than peripheral view of their territory, so interconnection of work effort is hard to achieve. The difficulty of integrating the plans and actions of individual departments is the reason that local government (in fact any level of government and any large business) struggles to become a finely tuned, efficient and high powered machine. Nevertheless, the delivery of a livable community requires a honed engine with strong connection among all departments because the characteristics that make communities livable are not theterritory of individual units (or even the government alone, as noted above). Solutions to local challenges will come most easily from an integrated drive to improve. For example, a high crime rate in ajurisdiction is unlikely to be solved only by police or court action. Crime may be the result of conditions related to jobs, schools, street lighting, community connectedness, public trust, location of parks and more. Likewise, pedestrian friendly streets can be developed best with a partnership of planning, parks, utilities, police, fire, efforts to encourage community engagement and participation of the private sector and faith -based organizations. The NCS Helps Manage "Livability" The National Citizen Survey has been designed to gather resident perspectives about community livability and to report to elected officials, local managers and community stakeholders those areas of livability that are doing well and thosethat merit improvement. The results of The NCS are reported in eight facets of community livability – natural environment, economy, built environment, recreation and wellness, safety, education and enrichment, mobility and community engagement. For each facet, residents report their perspectives about three aspects of livability – what we cal I the pillars of community life – the quality of community, quality of services and related resident activities. With The NCS, thevague definitions of livability disappear becausethe report offers quantified metricsthat indicate how livable the community is overall and within each domain. These measureswill help leaders identify areas of strength and need and evaluate progress toward improvement. The emphasis on livability makes for a strategic approach to community quality and arms local leaders with critical information they need to help movethe community where residents want it to be. © 2014, National Research Center, I nc. Page 5 Figure 2: The Eight Facets of Livable Communities