by Reyna Farrales, retired deputy county manager for performance management, San Mateo County, California

In November 2012, voters in San Mateo County passed Measure A, which is a 10-year, half-cent general sales tax to support essential services and improve and replace critical facilities. The tax measure needed a majority vote to pass and was approved by 65.4% of voters, bringing a much-needed boost to the general fund after several years of budget reductions.

After the tax passed, county leaders began preparing for public hearings on how to invest the estimated $65 million in annual revenue. Leaders also understood the importance of voters knowing where their money was going, so work began behind the scenes on ways to show residents the difference the tax was making throughout the community. One of our early investments was an open data portal, which now houses our performance dashboards and maps for initiatives funded by Measure A in these priority areas set by the board of supervisors:

• Public safety
• Health and mental health
• Youth and education
• Housing and homelessness
• Parks and environment
• Older adults and veterans services
• Community services.

We also created a website to highlight client stories for each of the priorities and to show progress on affordable housing and major capital projects through Measure A maps. As a companion piece to the performance dashboards, this website let the county put a human face on the data.

Measure A required the appointment of a 10-member citizen oversight committee to audit revenues generated by the tax. The committee's bylaws and rules of procedure call for the preparation of an annual report to the board of supervisors, which includes the audit of tax receipts, a review of spending, and a performance report with recommendations on how to better measure the impacts of initiatives funded by Measure A.

Each year the committee appoints a performance measures ad hoc committee to work with staff to review and recommend improvements to the performance measures. Every initiative funded by Measure A has at least one performance measure to demonstrate its impact on the board's priorities. In reviewing performance measures with committee members, we ask them to tell us if the measures answer these two questions:

• Are we making a difference?
• Is anyone better off?

As residents in the community benefitting from the tax, committee members have given us feedback that has significantly improved what we measure and how we communicate results. One suggestion that we continue to work on is showing the original need or service gap in the community, and whether funding from the tax has addressed the need. For example:

• Are more third-graders reading at grade level in the underperforming school districts that received Measure A funds?
• Has response time improved and unscheduled maintenance dropped because we're now replacing fire engines as planned?

Another recent suggestion that we implemented is to include budget-to-actual information so we can show both spending and results for each initiative.

In November 2016, 70.4% of San Mateo County voters approved Measure K, which extended Measure A for 20 years. That level of support, particularly when the original tax was only four years in, illustrated to us that our efforts to inform the public were working. To date, Measure K (formerly Measure A) has generated almost $400 million for affordable housing and homeless services, new public safety facilities, early childhood learning, prevention and early intervention programs for youth and older adults, and targeted support for specific needs within each supervisorial district.

We believe that listening to and implementing recommendations of the citizen oversight committee contributed in part to the extension of the tax and continued support of essential services in San Mateo County.

Reyna Farrales, a member of ICMA's Performance Management Advisory Committee, was the staff liaison to the Measure K Oversight Committee in San Mateo County.

Related Resources

Engaging the Community in the Budgeting Process- This blog post details how Greensboro, North Carolina is involving its residents in the budging process.

Lessons In Citizen Engagement- In a blog post from April 2017 Miranda Lutzow shares her experience with citizen engaement efforts. 

Top Performance Management Resources- This page has all kinds of resources related to performance management.