A Step Towards Data-Driven Decision Making

One of my primary concerns on the park district board is having appropriate information to drive our decision making process. Towards this goal, I am looking for staff to track monthly usage of our facilities, including the hours that each facility could be open, the hours that each facility was open, and the number of users of each facility.

Compiling this data for each programmable space (such as rooms and fields) would help the board to make informed decisions when evaluating capital improvements and maintenance. For example, if one of several comparable athletic fields has much less use due to poor turf conditions, it would benefit the most from renovations. Without usage data we don't know where our limited funds are best spent.

In the August 18th meeting the board decided against compiling usage at the facility level and instead voted to compile usage data averaged at the program level. More data is always better, but we will need to go further to have the information we need for budget decisions.