Clean Neighborhoods Mayoral Transition Committee Report Outcome and Success Metrics
Outcome #1:San Jose is a clean and beautiful city.
Success Metric: Quality of services rating for cleanstreets, sidewalks.
Success Metric: The rate of improvement within theneighborhoodcleanliness perception survey, possibly by using a visual cleanlinessassessment score (Possibly a “Park Conditions Assessment”).
Outcome #2: San Jose residents and stakeholders knowhow to report blightconcerns and challenges effectively.
Success Metric:Combined customer satisfaction ratingof identifiedcommunity resource tools Success Metric: The rate of increase for actionableservice requestssubmitted via identified community resource tools Success Metric: Rate of user/subscriber growth bylocation and language FY 23-24 Recommendations
Recommendation #1: Above all, the City must focuson staffing. This is integral tosuccessfully achieving the outcomes as chartered by this committee. Hiring andrecruiting for all vacant positions is critical to cleaning up San Jose.
Success Metric:The rate of reduction in staff vacanciesrelated tocleanliness and city beautification.
Recommendation #2: Revise the City of San Jose’s customerservice tool mobileapplication to facilitate actionable complaints/reports in users’ preferredlanguage, improve user-experience and satisfaction such as by:
● Providing language-specific app training at community meetings. 1 ● Market the application much more heavily throughout the city and educateresidents about the app by creating a marketing toolkit and by sharing itmore widely.● Frequent and more improved communication to the user about “ticket”status.● Add ability for users to provide feedback ( a “rebuttal”) in 311 app forvehicles or other service requests that are determined ineligible orinactionable.
Success Metric: Rate of user/subscriber growth.
Success Metric: Rate of increase in the SJ 311 customersatisfaction survey.
Success Metric: Rate of increase of actionable ticketssubmitted.
Success Metric: Rate of programs meeting their performancemeasures andtargets (i.e. time to resolve tickets/service requests by program).
Success Metric: Creation of one toolkit for businesses,schools, communityorganizations and other stakeholders to help them understand theusefulness of SJ 311.
Recommendation #3: Expand existing or add new Citycontracted organizations orpartners (i.e. neighborhood associations, non-profits, government entities, privatecorporations, etc.) to support clean neighborhood efforts and beautificationprojects.
Success Metric: Overall reduction in the volume ofblight (e.g., trash, weeds,graffiti, etc.) present on city streets, private property, and other areas ofconcern.
Success Metric: Rate of improvement on non-City ownedproperties - workto establish interjurisdictional partnerships Recommendation #4: Invest in blight and litter preventioneducation for SanJoseans by rebranding the free junk pick up program, adding “love where you live”/ anti-litter signs, by creating marketing tool kits to be utilized by council districtsand other stakeholders to enhance communications, and by informing the publicabout alternative means of disposal. The City should also strongly consider adding 2 additional trash receptacles in areas that the City of San Jose has not historicallyplaced them, but could badly need them - especially outside of business districts.
Success Metric:The rate of increasing engagement(i.e. hits, views, clicks,etc.) for media campaigns on websites, applications, social media, and onother mediums.
Success Metric: The rate of decreased illegal dumpingmaterial collected FY 24+ Recommendations
Recommendation #1: Plant more native plants and vegetationwithin our urbanareas so that we have more greenery and less concrete as well as along ourwaterways, especially in locations that have been environmentally degraded dueto challenges associated with climate change, drought, the housing crisis, and forother various reasons.
Success Metric: The rate of increase in park scores.
Success Metric: An increase in community beautificationefforts (e.g. TreePlantings).
Recommendation #2: Educate property and business ownersregarding theimportance of clean business corridors and provide property owners theresources and services (i.e. connections to beneficial organizations, other businessowners, the provision of cleaning products and equipment, etc.) to keep theirproperty and neighborhoods clean. An outcome of this might be the creation ofadditional stakeholders that are further engaged in their community, newbusiness associations, and even possibly more business improvement districts.
Success Metric: The rate of increase in visual cleanlinessscores within eachbusiness district.
Recommendation #3: Add new languages to the SJ 311App (such as Chinese andother prevalent languages written in the City of San Jose) on an annual basis.Increase the level of accessibility for San Jose’s customer service tool especially forthose with various disabilities. 3 Success Metric: Interpretation of SJ 311 into the top 10 read languageswithin the City of San Jose.
Recommendation #4: Add additional features for customersatisfaction to increaseuser “gamification” of the application so that competitions amongst city councildistricts and neighborhoods can be formed and the cleanliness of the city can beincentivized through contests, competitions, and games.
Success Metric: The increasing rate of users participatingin SJ 311 via“gamification” efforts.
ADDENDUM
The committee is especially cognizant of the fact that we are a City of manydiverse residents who speak, read, and write in a variety of different languages.Furthermore, people have different levels of ability and access to differentresources.
This committee seeks to implement policies in an equitable manner so that wecan be more inclusive to the broader community.
The committee further recognizes that as we do a better job at removing trash,volume should eventually decrease and so another metric for success may need tobe considered. City staff should focus on establishing learning cycles to ensureprograms end and begin as new strategies are needed to tackle the issues we faceas a city.
Consider facilitating the ability for the City of San Jose to clean or remove blightfrom private property. Unresponsiveness or ignorance should not be an excuse forabsentee property owners to allow the City to look neglected, especially in keyeconomic corridors like downtown San Jose.
While a simple thought, the utilization of trash cans throughout San Jose cannotbe underscored. The availability and type of trash containers should be studied sothat a better solution can be found. The correct trash cans should be identified.Staff should consider the pros and cons to traditional San Jose trash cans vs. BigBelly style trash cans. San Jose should find innovative ways to solve our litter and 4 blight issues through tech solutions while encouraging residents to get moreinvolved with the look and feel of our city.
San Jose should also reconsider the rules associated with vehicle blight andvehicle abatement. The policies established are not working for residents who areoften confused as to why 311 reports go unresolved regarding vehicles thought tobe abandoned or otherwise looking as if they would qualify to be towed. Thiscommittee wants San Jose 311 to be as easy to use as any other majorsmartphone application.
Finally, pride must be restored in our City. Through marketing campaigns such as“love where you live” or the establishment of a cleanliness czar, San Jose can takeback our neighborhoods that have long struggled with blight and litter. While theCity government is on the front lines of solving this problem, it is up to eachneighbor to do their part and restore pride in our city.
Clean Neighborhoods Transition Committee Roster / Acknowledgements:
1. Councilmember Peter Ortiz, Council Co-Chair2. Deb Kramer, Community Co-Chair3. Helen Brock, Beautify Almaden4. Andrea Flores-Shelton, City of San Jose5. Dina El-Tawansy, Caltrans D46. Jim Salata, Garden City Construction7. Blanca Carbajal, East Side Community Leader8. Justin Imamura, Trash Punx9. Gabriela Chavez-Lopez, Latina Coalition10. Faisal Yazadi, Islamic Community Center11. Dorsey Moore, San Jose Conservation Corps12. John Tucker, AFSCME Local 10113. Jeremy Cabaccang, Operating Engineers Local 314. Juan Estrada, District 5 United15. Chloe Shipp, San Jose Downtown Association, Groundwerx16. John Leipelt, Retired17. Alain Mowad, Talkdesk 5 18. Wanda Wong, Retired19.Melissa Got Lopez, Mt. Pleasant Neighborhood Association20.Liz Quezada, SOMOS Mayfair21.KelseyColson, Private Family Company Mayoral Transition Committees "Glossary"
Goals:Each committee has a mandate that includes thegoalsof the committee. Forexample, the goals of the community safety committee are to (1) increasepedestrian and traffic safety, and (2) reduce street level crime and improve the feltexperience of safety for residents and small businesses. In meetings, we've alsoused the words "pillar", "north star", and "mandate".
Outcomes:The transition committees are going to start by discussing what success looks likefrom a holistic community impact or state of well being perspective. We can thinkof these asoutcomes. To give an example, the CommunitySafety Committee maydecide that one of their outcomes is “San José residents feel safe anytime,anywhere in San José” or “San José residents feel safe walking in theirneighborhood.” Recommendations:The Committees will spend the second and third committee meetings generatingrecommendations. Each Committee will produce 3 - 5recommendations for theupcoming budget cycle, and 3 - 5 recommendations for the longer term (withinthe next two years).
The recommendations will also have a success metric attached but Committeemembers are not expected to define actual specific targets for these successmetrics. Recommendations may or may not be specific to a particular Cityprogram or service. For example, stricter enforcement of speeding in heavilytrafficked intersections or increasing the number of traffic calming solutions may 6 be specific recommendations from the Community Safety Committee. Eachtransition committee will rank their recommendations in order of which they thinkwill have the biggest impact on their goal and outcome.
Success MetricsOutcomes and recommendations should be measurable via asuccess metricsuchas a community indicator, which is a performance measure that quantifies trendsaffecting outcomes (the well-being of communities). Success metrics are typicallyexpressed as a rate or percentage and can be disaggregated by race and locationto identify disparities and and take action to close the disparities. To give anexample, an outcome may have the success metric “the percentage of San Joseresidents who feel safe anytime anywhere in San Jose.” The goal is to identifyboththe outcome and the recommendation success metricsso the City does notbecome overly focussed on measuring a particular program or service that is notultimately improving the higher level outcome. When an outcome is not clear orcannot be readily measured, other program or service level performancemeasures may be used as proxies. For example, a proxy success metric forpedestrian and traffic safety might be a reduction in the crash injury rate.Committee members are not expected to define actual specific targets for theseoutcome metrics.
Product:Theproductof the transition committees will be 15- 25 recommendations for theupcoming budget cycle, and 15 - 25 recommendations for the longer term.
The budget cycle recommendations will feed directly into budget prioritizationover the course of two council meetings. In the first council meeting,Councilmembers will provide a publicreadoutof thecommitteerecommendations. In the second council meeting, Councilmembers will rankoutcomes across all the transition committees. The Administration will use theranked strategies from Council and the product from the transition committees asinputs in the normal budget process. 7