Sanders Collecting Performance Data on City Employees

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published March 3, 2008 at 3:10 PM PST

This story was published more than 16 years ago.

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders says he's collecting data on how well city employees do their jobs to help measure progress at city hall. But employees question what the data will actually measure. KPBS

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders says he's collecting data on how well city employees do their jobs to help measure progress at city hall. But employees question what the data will actually measure. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

Sanders says the city has had little hard data to evaluate its own performance. He says he’ll introduce performance level data in this year's budget deliberations.

Become a KPBS sponsor

Sanders : The new performance measurements offer the city council and members of the public a way to monitor the progress of the ongoing reform efforts.

Some of the data comes from customer satisfaction surveys.

But Damien Tryon, a city labor official, says measuring performance is not the same as measuring service levels.

Tryon : That's what people need to know, how much does it cost to slurry seal a mile of street , an actual measurement of service levels and most of the department are already recording their service levels so I don't understand why these are not being brought forward to the public.

The city's budget committee will discuss the best way to measure city services, so the public can see the effects of budget cuts and reforms.

Become a KPBS sponsor

Alison St John, KPBS News.

Alison St John

twitter

Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.