Just the facts: City hands the public data, and influence

Residents wanted something done about a dangerous intersection near Union Square, and told city officials about it at a neighborhood meeting last spring.

At a meeting in October, Somerville's director of traffic and parking was there to discuss the intersection - Dane Street and Dane Avenue. The discussion led to the Police Department's installing a speed board on Dane Street. Traffic and Parking put up a sign warning cars to slow down. And Inspectional Services asked a property owner to trim his bushes to improve visibility at the intersection.

Last month, the city completed a study that found most drivers weren't exceeding the speed limit, but that it was too high. Officials also have determined that the design of the Dane Street Bridge was a major cause of traffic problems.

The city's response is part of a program called ResiStat, an arm of the SomerStat program, which was launched in 2004 with the intent of using hard data to make decisions and hold city officials accountable for what they accomplish.

Until last year, SomerStat was mainly an internal management tool, setting goals for departments and adapting the annual budget to reflect ideas that have been discussed through the program's regular meetings with department heads.

Under ResiStat, which was funded with grant money, residents are provided with information relevant to their community or interest group. Their suggestions are later discussed with city staff, and SomerStat staffers are kept up-to-date on their status so that they can inform the community.

Regular meetings are held with nine neighborhoods and five special-interest groups - parents, young residents, and speakers of Spanish, Creole, and Portuguese. The neighborhood meetings focus on nuts-and-bolts city issues like traffic, street maintenance, and trash, while the meetings with special interest groups provide more specific information.

Next year, the program will be expanded to more communities, but meetings will be less frequent.

"We hope this gets embedded in the culture here," said Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone. "Government is going to be working side-by-side with [residents] to become more transparent and accountable."

In recent weeks, ResiStat meetings have given residents an overview of the city budget and asked them to prioritize how they would like to see city money spent.

A session last week was held for young residents in - where else? - a tavern to discuss the city's green initiatives, including how to limit use of plastic bags. At a parents meeting, residents expressed concerns about how the Somerville Schools market its programs.

The superintendent attended a later meeting, and a working group of parents was formed to critique the schools' website and fliers.

SomerStat director Stephanie Hirsch said until ResiStat was launched, the city's 311 call line was the primary vehicle for resident input. Hirsch said her staff regularly brings in 16 city departments for "accountability meetings," where they are asked what they have accomplished on a laundry list of action items.

"Hearing directly from residents on what matters adds another angle to what we are going to push them on," Hirsch said. She added that she'll encourage the administration to "act on a lot of the suggestions so people won't get demoralized."

Alderman Maryann Heuston, who represents Ward 2, said she was an early skeptic because she didn't want someone from the mayor's administration running her community meetings. But she has found that ResiStat ensures the mayor and the aldermen are on the same page, she said.

"It really can be a partnership," she said. "You actually have support for what you want to get done."

She said it's also useful for discussions about neighborhood issues to be guided by numbers. "It takes the meeting from being an anecdotal meeting and a very subjective meeting . . . to bringing in an element of objectivity," she said.

Staffers for the state Department of Conservation and Recreation attended one community meeting in Ten Hills, where residents complained about upkeep of state land along the Mystic River. After the meeting, residents and DCR staffers walked along the river together, Hirsch said.

But Somerville resident Allison Stieber, who attended a Lincoln & Perry Park ResiStat meeting, said she didn't find it very useful.

"The kind of issues I have with the city I don't think can really be well addressed in that kind of format," said Stieber, who is unhappy with the city's aggressive parking enforcement.

"There's not really any direct access to people making the decisions in the city."

"I've come to expect from this administration to give people a feeling of participation. But I question how much people's input is really making any difference on things that affect their daily lives," she said.

But other residents are more excited about its possibilities. Barbara Castro, who attended a few East Somerville ResiStat meetings, called the program "a great idea."

"It's essential that decision makers include residents' input into all kind of matters, be it public safety, trash collection, litter, anything really that affects the neighborhoods," she said. "Hopefully, decision makers will use it and incorporate residents' concerns into the decisions they make."