Public Space Management Plan: Digging in to the Project Evaluation Scorecard
Planning Division staff invite members of the public to test out the functionality of the Project Evaluation Scorecard by joining an in-person exploration session:
- Additional dates to be determined
To download the Project Evaluation Scorecard Exploration Kit, visit the City’s Public Space Management Plan website: https://bit.ly/publicspacemanagementplan.
A key component of the Public Space Management Plan is a new tool to help with decision-making. City staff and the project consulting team identified that often decision-makers are pressed to advance a new project or initiative without data to compare the project under consideration with other priorities. The Project Evaluation Scorecard attempts to fill that gap.
The scorecard uses a set of eight benefit categories, each with several criteria listed below. New projects or initiatives would be scored by city staff. Three benefit categories receive an added weight to their score to reflect recent City policies that prioritize Racial Equity, Environmental Sustainability, and Safety. The completed scorecard would be shared publicly as an attachment to council cover memos. The scoring becomes a tool for city staff and the City Council to begin comparing different projects against each other.
The scorecard is not meant to be a judgment upon the merit of a project. Instead, it evaluates how a project stacks up against existing city priorities, and then that score can be compared to the scores of other projects. The scorecard would not be prescriptive or determine whether or not a project advances, but it would be one of the considerations, publicly shared, for how to advance new projects.
The tool may be used to compare two or more projects under consideration at a given time. It may also be used over the longer term to test potential projects against a benchmarked level of benefit. Over time, certain scores may emerge as minimum thresholds for project consideration. The tool, itself, is also meant to be public-facing so that community members and City Council members could take on the task of generating their own project scores, or use it as a tool for planning new initiatives.
