Santa Monica Scorecard: Establishing a Citywide Realignment Performance Framework
Request by Mayor Torosis, Councilmember Hall, and Councilmember Raskin On October 28, 2025, the Santa Monica City Council adopted the Realignment Plan, the foundation of a comprehensive “renaissance” for the City of Santa Monica. This plan outlines a unifying strategy to strengthen Santa Monica’s economic, cultural, civic, and organizational health. It articulates a clear set of priorities focused on:
1. Safe Neighborhoods & Clean Public Spaces
2. Economic Opportunity & Growth
3. Affordable, Livable & Secure Housing for All
4. Organizational Capacity & Service Delivery
5. Organizational Health & Culture
The Realignment Plan calls for measurable improvements in downtown revitalization, public safety, street cleanliness, infrastructure reliability, business vitality, economic recovery, renter stability, affordable housing production, customer-centered service delivery, and citywide organizational performance. Collectively, these elements are essential to restoring public confidence and ensuring that Santa Monica continues to deliver exceptional services and a high quality of life for residents, workers, and visitors.
Over the past several years, the City has implemented important reforms that strengthen the foundation for this renaissance, including adoption of a first-of-its-kind Homeless Strategic Plan; expansion of right-to-counsel and emergency assistance for vulnerable tenants; improvements to development review and permitting processes; activation of new economic recovery tools; modernized code enforcement and inspection programs; implementation of expanded public safety deployment strategies; and improvements to internal business processes and service delivery systems. The City has also advanced major policy reforms through the Housing Element update, tenant protection enhancements, racial equity initiatives, and strategic economic development efforts.
As the Realignment Plan shifts into implementation, it is vital that the City adopt a structured, data-informed, and transparent performance framework that allows the Council and the public to understand:
• What actions the City is taking.
• How well services are being delivered.
• Whether conditions in the community are measurably improving. • Where additional attention, resources, or support may be needed.
As the Realignment Plan moves into its implementation phase, it is essential that the City hold itself accountable for visible progress. Residents, workers and businesses must be able to clearly understand what actions are being taken, how outcomes are being measured and whether the City is moving in the right direction. Transparency and accountability are foundational to rebuilding public trust and ensuring that this plan delivers real results and ushers in a renaissance for our City.
Other leading jurisdictions have demonstrated that transparent performance dashboards are a critical tool for strengthening government responsiveness and public confidence. New York City’s Mayor’s Management Report, Los Angeles’ mayoral performance dashboards, Washington D.C.’s Grade.DC.Gov platform, Boston’s CityScore initiative and Portland’s Budget Performance Dashboard have each shown that clear public metrics accelerate improvements in public safety, street cleanliness, permitting efficiency, homelessness response, business activity and housing production.
These systems help residents see progress for themselves and help governments identify areas that need stronger focus or additional support.
Santa Monica has already established strong internal foundations for such an approach through investments in 311 modernization, improvements to business processes, updates to code enforcement and building inspection systems, a more effective coverage schedule for law enforcement presence throughout the City, new economic recovery strategies, strengthened renter protections and reforms to housing production and preservation systems. The adoption of the Realignment Plan offers an ideal opportunity to formalize these efforts into a unified, citywide performance management structure.
Santa Monica Scorecard is the system that will align our efforts and track outcomes under a transparent performance management structure. We are asking that the City Manager develop a unified data framework and public-facing dashboard that organizes outcome and output performance indicators across the Realignment Plan’s five priority areas, including:
• Safe & Clean metrics (such as downtown crime, police response times, graffiti removal, illegal dumping resolution, and lighting repairs). • Economic vitality measures (including commercial and office vacancy trends, business openings and closings, consumer spending and activation of public spaces).
• Housing & tenant protection outcomes (including multi-family vacancy rates, right to counsel utilization, habitability compliance, and tenant protection results). • Core organizational performance indicators such as service reliability, 311 responsiveness, and workforce engagement.
Together, these metrics will create a clear and accountable picture of the City’s operational performance and the community outcomes the Realignment Plan is designed to achieve.
Therefore, we request that the City Council direct the City Manager, in coordination with the City Attorney, to:
1. Return to the City Council within 30 days with an information item outlining the proposed cross-departmental Key Performance Indicator (KPI) framework aligned with the Realignment Plan’s five priority areas. The report should:
• Identify recommended outcome and output measures for each Realignment domain.
• Explain how each indicator reflects progress toward the Plan’s goals and demonstrates return on investment for residents.
• Incorporate downtown-specific crime and safety indicators, commercial and office vacancy measures, multi-family housing vacancy, tenant protection and habitability metrics, and other measures consistent with the Realignment data framework.
• Outline how data will be collected, validated, and updated.
2. Establish a unified “Santa Monica Scorecard” performance management and public dashboard system within 90 days that aligns directly with the Realignment Plan and includes a structured, regularly updated data environment. As part of developing this framework, the City Manager should:
• Develop a set of KPIs for each Realignment priority area, including:
o Safe Neighborhoods & Clean Public Spaces (e.g., crime trends, police response times, cleanliness and maintenance performance, homelessness outreach outcomes).
o Economic Opportunity & Growth (e.g., commercial and office vacancy rates, business openings and closings, public space activations, permitting activity).
o Affordable, Livable & Secure Housing (e.g., affordable housing pipeline and completions, multi-family vacancy rates, tenant protection outcomes, habitability compliance, homelessness placements).
o Organizational Capacity & Service Delivery (e.g., 311 responsiveness, permitting timelines, service reliability).
o Organizational Health & Culture (e.g., employee engagement, vacancy and turnover trends, training and development metrics). • Consult with all relevant City departments to develop clear, measurable, and feasible indicators.
• Establish quarterly and annual performance targets for each indicator so that the public can understand progress and what success looks like. • Integrate existing departmental data systems and develop new data collection processes where needed to ensure accuracy, standardization, and timely reporting.
• Include longitudinal trend analyses showing month-over-month, quarter-overquarter, and year-over-year change to evaluate performance over time.
3. Ensure the Performance Counts dashboard includes key indicators such as:
• Housing & Tenant Stability: preservation of rent-controlled units; issuance of certificates of occupancy for affordable and market-rate units; number of affordable units in development and completed; multi-family vacancy rates; tenant protection and habitability metrics including tracking Ellis Act evictions; and households supported through rental assistance, eviction prevention, and stabilization programs.
• Public Safety & Homelessness Response: police response times, crime trends (including downtown-specific crime and calls for service), proactive enforcement activity, shelter placements, interim housing placements, and permanent housing outcomes.
• Cleanliness & Infrastructure: response times and completion rates for graffiti removal, bulky item pickup, illegal dumping, street and sidewalk repairs, lighting outages, and tree maintenance.
• Service Delivery & Civic Responsiveness: permitting timelines, inspections completed, 311 resolution rates, public space activations, and business openings and closings.
4. Design and deploy a visually clear, user-friendly, mobile-responsive public dashboard (scorecard) that is easily accessible on the City’s website.
5. Ensure the dashboard allows for comparing current data to quarterly and annual targets and track progress in a simple, understandable way.
6. Provide biannual updates to the City Council summarizing progress across all KPIs.
7. Provide the City Council with an annual evaluation of the Realignment Plan’s effectiveness based on the Performance Counts metrics, and include recommendations for updates, adjustments, or resource reallocations as necessary.