I am pleased to tell you about a Citizen Survey process that the City of Wichita is conducting as part of its Transforming Wichita Initiative. Before I go into the details of the survey, I thought I would start out with WHY we are doing a survey.

The last time the City of Wichita did a Citizen Survey was in 1986. Twenty (20) years ago. The world has changed; generations have changed; the City has changed and we need to know how well the City organization is doing in providing services to the community. We also need to know how well the quality of life in Wichita compares to comparable cities our size and makeup.

This measurement will provide a solid benchmark that we will be able to use in meeting our future. We will learn what we need to improve or even change in providing services to the Wichita community.

When we launched Transforming Wichita last year, we defined it as a journey by which we fundamentally change the way this organization measures, reports and performs the every day work of delivering services to Wichita.

With this, the City Council set the Vision and the direction Wichita should take:

• For Wichita to be a premiere Midwestern city where people want to visit, live, work and play, and,

• That Wichita City government be a model of world class city governance – because this government is where citizens are getting the highest possible value for their dollars.

For this vision to be attained, we are fast becoming a high performance organization. However, we must know that the direction we are moving in is the direction the community is moving in. While we are doing a lot of things right, we can’t be complacent. We will:

• Focus on results

• Understand what matters most to our customers.

• Make performance matter.

• Move decision-making to the front-line, closest to customers; and

• Foster an environment of excellence, inclusiveness, accountability, learning and innovation.

Through Transformation Wichita, we achieve outstanding results, and measure and report those results to show progress and recognize outstanding performance. We also want to identify those areas that we need to improve.

This survey, and what we learn from it, will play an important role for us to do just that. We want to see what our paying customers think about this city’s service. I applaud the City Council for agreeing to do this. Policy decisions on organizational matters rest with the City Council. They have a vision for what this City can become and a sense of direction to get us there.

Yogi Berra purportedly said, “You’ve got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.” We believe that with the help of this survey, we will be able to continue on the path of achieving that vision.

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