Mayor’s
Management Report: Your City’s Report Card
by Mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg
Where
do you turn when you want to know what condition your child’s
school building is in, if the local playground is in good repair
or how clean the streets in your neighborhood are compared to
those in other communities?
Answers about those and the state of other basic City services
are in the “Mayor’s Management Report.” It’s
designed to be a public report card on the performance of City
agencies. And the latest MMR, makes it easier than ever for
average New Yorkers to get information about City agencies,
and judge how well and how cost effectively they’re functioning.
By and large, City agencies are doing a remarkable job. The
current MMR covers the twelve months ending in July. We all
recognize that was one of the most difficult periods in New
York history. Nevertheless, for the most part the performance
of City agencies either improved or remained stable. For example,
major felony crimes continued to fall, down 9 percent since
last year and by 31percent since 1998, and homicides fell 10
percent this year. The response time by police, firefighters
and emergency medical personnel was cut; deaths from tuberculosis
declined; so did complaints about potholes in City streets.
Those achievements make New York a better city for all of us.
The new MMR is itself a major step forward in making City government
more open and accountable. It is more user-friendly than MMRs
of the past in three significant ways. First, it’s slimmer,
better organized and written in plain, understandable language.
Second, it’s more sharply focused on measuring success
or failure in delivering City services, and that gives New Yorkers
a clearer picture of what really matters to us. And third, it
makes innovative use of the latest information technology. For
the first time, selected data from the MMR has been computer
mapped.
That
permits anyone logging on to the City’s website at www.nyc.gov to
evaluate the work of City agencies anywhere in the Big Apple.
Just click on the phrase “My Neighborhood Stats”
on the City’s home page, type in a street address, and
you can find performance indicators about parks, police, schools
and other City services in that neighborhood and compare them
to other communities across the City.
Efficiency in City services is more important than ever. We’re
in an era when every agency has to do more with less. City employees
are working hard to do just that. And the information available
in the new MMR will help every New Yorker judge how well we’re
doing our jobs.#
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