Neighborhood Plan Implementation Audit Report
Upon my request, the City Auditor has produced an audit of the City’s performance on neighborhood plan implementation. The audit indicates that while neighborhood planning and the first stage of implementation were successful on many levels, more recently the city has decreased staffing associated with plan implementation, cut some programs that supported implementation and the plans, in some cases, have grown stale.
The audit was necessary and relevant as we approach the middle-age of our neighborhood plans. The results will be helpful as we chart a course for the second decade of the plans’ lives.
Thousands of people participated in the neighborhood planning process between 1995 and 1999, producing 38 neighborhood plans. The process of planning was rooted in citizen-led planning. The city funded community groups to hire their own planners and dedicated city staff to work with these citizen planners and consultants on shaping the plans.
City Auditor Susan Cohen reported that, though the planning process inspired a new generation of caring and concerned citizens, they sometimes have felt that their efforts were for naught. Contrary city policies, delays in infrastructure spending, and rapid neighborhood growth contribute to feelings that the plans have been disregarded.
The auditors researched city budgets to determine what policy and funding are driven by neighborhood plans. They also spoke with neighborhood residents, business people, non-profit staff, staff from other government agencies and city staff.
The report’s description of spending shows that the City’s primary success in implementing the plans has come through the voter-approved library bond, parks and community center levies, and even the recent Bridging the Gap transportation package. These electoral measures brought new infrastructure to every sector of the City.
Auditor Cohen told me, “We heard that citizens are willing to pay for new amenities, assuming that they are the facilities and services that they want.”
Due to an economic recession, a downturn in plan implementation momentum occurred shortly after the beginning of the new century. Budget cuts in the Department of Neighborhoods meant that six sector manager positions were cut. The audit shows these staff had been instrumental in finding ways that City departments could collaborate with the community, other agencies and private development to get plan recommendations done.
I intend to make neighborhood planning and implementation a priority again for the City. The audit says that some neighborhood plans are already outdated, some because most of the initial workplan items have been met and some because of rapid changes that have occurred. We need to reinvest in planning, so people can do a gut check about the vision of their plan and also to refresh the list of to-do items they want the city and themselves to execute. Whatever that reinvestment looks like I firmly believe it must fully involve and be driven by neighborhoods.
Read the audit:
- Neighborhood Plan Implementation Audit reportat available at the top right-hand side of the City Auditor's homepage.
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