Page 161 - CityofSouthlakeFY27Budget

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None of these outcomes were produced in a single year. Each reflects staffing, training, equipment, and
capital decisions made through the budget process several cycles earlier, which is precisely what a long-
range planning framework is meant to make possible.

The system’s value, however, is not only that it confirms good results. It is that it surfaces gaps early
enough to act on them, and the current cycle offers several examples. The Water, Wastewater, and
Storm Water Master Plans adopted by Council in April 2026 replaced documents that had not been Strategic Direction
comprehensively updated in more than fourteen years, and developing them with internal staff rather
than outside consultants avoided a substantial contract cost while keeping policy direction and adoption
timeline under City control. The Recreation and Athletics Task Force found that per player athletic fees
had not been adjusted in over a decade and were recovering only 32 percent of field maintenance costs,
and the fee structure and policies Council adopted in May 2026 raise projected recovery to an estimated
58 percent. Each of these began as an opportunity identified through the review cycle shown in Figure
5, and each was addressed successfully through Council direction inside that same cycle.

Residents and businesses confirm the results. The Citizen Satisfaction Survey drew 1,139 responses at
the 95 percent confidence level, two and a half times the number required for statistical validity. Ninety
eight percent of residents rate their quality of life as excellent, very good, or good, and 96 percent rate
the City’s performance on safety and security in the same range. The 2025 Business Climate Survey,
published in March 2026, produced the strongest results in the survey’s six-year history, with 97 percent
of respondents rating Southlake as a good or excellent place to do business and 100 percent of those
who interacted with a City employee rating that experience as excellent or good. As Figure 5 indicates,
the citizen survey sits at the front of the annual cycle rather than at its end. Survey findings, including
the areas where residents see room to improve, move directly into departmental work plans for the
following year. The survey is an input to decision making, not a report card collected after the fact.

The workforce that produces these results is measured with the same discipline. Fifty seven percent of
Southlake employees are actively engaged compared to 32 percent across the public sector, placing
the organization in the 72nd percentile among state and local government organizations surveyed
nationally, with an engagement ratio of 8.1 engaged employees to every one actively disengaged.
Voluntary turnover improved to 10.6 percent and time to fill a vacant position remains well below the
90 day target. Volunteer Southlake generated $779,097 in service value against a $750,000 target, and
fifteen awards and recognitions were earned from national, state, and industry organizations during the
first eight months of FY 2026 alone, spanning police, fire, finance, library, economic development, parks,
and public works.

Not every measure meets its target, and the scorecards on the following pages show that plainly.
Voluntary turnover remains above the 8 percent goal, and citizen ratings for travel convenience,
pedestrian pathways, and website findability all fall below their targets. Several of these are deliberate
stretch goals, set above current performance to drive improvement rather than to confirm it. They
appear here for the same reason they appear on the scorecard. The value of the Strategic Management
System is not that it guarantees good results, but that it makes clear which results are strong, which
require attention, and what the organization intends to do about them in the next cycle. That is why the
process depicted in Figure 5 never ceases.

FY 2027 City of Southlake | Budget Book 161