'Voice of the People' says Dublin is Tops
Dublin received nine Voice of the People Awards for Excellence and a Center for Performance Measurement Award today from the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) and the National Research Center, Inc. (NRC), at the ICMA annual conference in San Jose, CA.
“It is gratifying to get this kind of recognition from ICMA for the vision, planning and work of our City leaders and staff, but is particularly gratifying that the ratings that made us eligible for these national awards came from Dublin residents,” said Marsha Grigsby, interim Dublin City Manager.
The awards are the culmination of the nationwide 2009 independent National Citizen Survey (NCS) in which the residents of Dublin rated their community higher as a place to live than people from any other community participating in the survey.
In that survey, published earlier this year, Dublin ranked first out of 306 communities when residents were asked to rate their community as a place to live. Dubliners rated their community higher than people from any other surveyed jurisdiction on overall appearance, overall image and reputation and services provided by the City.
It’s a great acknowledgement for a city to receive one Voice of the People Award,” said Tom Miller, president of National Research Center, the company that conducts the survey, “but to receive nine is extraordinary. Dublin’s residents are receiving remarkably strong city services which should make them and city staff proud."
Dublin received 2010 Voice of the People Awards for Excellence in nine of ten possible categories including: police services, garbage collection services, street repair, parks, recreation programs or classes, code enforcement, overall services, emergency medical services, and fire services (provided by Washington Township). The only category in which the City did not receive recognition was for libraries, a service not provided by Dublin or Washington Township.
“For us, the Voice of the People Award is a great affirmation that the effort and resources we put into our work are meeting public needs and expectations,” said Chief Al Woo of the Washington Township Fire Department. “Rarely do we have access to a tool that tells us our efforts are pointed in the right direction, which makes this recognition significant to us.”
To win a 2010 Award for Excellence, the rating for service quality in a category must be one of the top three among all eligible jurisdictions in the 2009 survey. In addition, the service rating must be in the top 10 percent among more than 500 jurisdictions in the NRC database of citizen surveys, used to provide normative comparisons in citizen survey reports.
"The results of the independent third-party NCS mirrored the results we received from our own satisfaction survey of Dublin residents gathered during a comparable time period, which reinforces the validity of our own survey” Grigsby said.
“We survey our residents on a regular basis to help us gauge, based on the community’s standards, if City Council priorities and the Administration’s service delivery are achieving the most effective outcomes for our residents,” she said.
She added that the results of both the NCS and Dublin’s community satisfaction survey will help the City with planning, budgeting, goal-setting, customer service and performance measurement.
Dublin also won a Certificate of Achievement Award from ICMA’s Center for Performance Measurement, an effort dedicated to helping local governments measure, compare, and improve municipal service delivery. The Center’s Comparative Performance Measurement (CPM) Program assists more than 200 cities and counties in the United States and Canada with the collections, analysis, and application of performance information.
“The certificate program is one of the pillars of CPM,” said Michael Lawson, director of CPM. “Through our certificate program, local governments are recognized for their exceptional commitment to continuous learning and improvement. The criteria on which the certificates are based serve as a checklist of effective, results-oriented management practices.”
Participation in the CPM program is relatively new for Dublin, according to Charlotte Colley, management assistant in the Office of the City Manager.
“We are honored to receive a certificate of achievement after participating in the program for only two years. We applied for the award in an effort to get feedback from CPM staff on areas where we needed improvement. Receiving this award is a significant accomplishment, especially since we are so new to the CPM program,” Colley said.
She added that performance measurement is especially helpful with budgeting and resource allocation.
“The CPM program helps us plan for a more well-rounded community,” Colley said.
For information about the International City/County Management Association, visit www.icma.org.
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