Dallas City Council members are set to settle on Wednesday how they will grade the five officials who answer directly to them, from the city manager to the inspector general, using scorecards a consultant has narrowed to five measures apiece.
The Oct. 21 briefing item was added at the request of Council Member Jesse Moreno, who chairs the Ad Hoc Committee on Administrative Affairs, according to an Oct. 15 memo from Mayor Eric Johnson. The agenda notes that the council may take a preliminary vote on briefing items.
Bars for each job
The draft presentation, prepared by Nextgen People and dated Oct. 8, says a council working session on Aug. 31 cut each official's list to six measures and set targets at levels found in nine peer cities, including Houston, San Antonio, Austin, Fort Worth and Phoenix. Members then suggested changes in nine one-on-one meetings, and the consultant now recommends five per official.
Each measure carries a floor, an expected level and an excellent level, and the deck says missing the floor would call for a development plan rather than dismissal.
For City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert, the recommended five are a resident satisfaction score on the city's annual survey, the share of bond and capital projects meeting their schedule milestones, the council's own annual rating, general fund spending against the adopted budget, and how many departments have briefed a council committee on a strategic plan in the past two years.
A measure of 311 requests closed on time is not among them; five members asked to drop it, calling the service standards dated.
Other scorecards include:
- City attorney: share of cases won, dismissed or settled within a set reserve, contract turnaround time, and a survey of client departments.
- City auditor: savings or recovered revenue for every dollar of audit budget, with a target of $5, and coverage of the 20 riskiest areas in the annual risk assessment.
- City secretary: meeting notices posted on time, minutes online within five business days and records requests answered on time.
- Inspector general: investigation reports finished within 180 days and the share of employees completing ethics training.
