Local Government KPIs: The 5 Categories, All 143 Measures & How Many Cities Really Track

A KPI in government is a quantified measure of whether a public agency — a city, county, or state — is delivering on its mission across the services it provides, the money it manages, and the outcomes residents actually feel. The five categories that matter most for a local government contain 143 individual measures in total: service delivery, financial stewardship, operational efficiency, community outcomes, and workforce capacity. The complete, defined list of all 143 is in this article.

But before the list, one number that should change how you read every other "top 10 KPIs for local government" article on the internet. We looked at the live scorecards of 165 US cities, counties, and municipal agencies running on ClearPoint as of August 2026. Not one of them tracks fewer than 10 KPIs. The median tracks 394. Two-thirds track more measures than this entire 143-item library contains.

So the "pick your top 10" advice is not a simplification. It describes a city that does not exist. Real local governments are drowning in measurement — and the failure mode follows from that. Across 150+ cities and counties in ClearPoint's dataset of 20,582 strategic plans analyzed, three in four strategic objectives have no owner at all, and 56% of KPIs have not received a fresh data point in twelve months. The hard part was never picking the metrics. It is keeping the ones you picked alive.

This article does both jobs. First, the five categories that tell you whether a city is actually working — the lens. Then the full bench of 143 defined measures underneath them, so you can staff the lens without inventing metrics from scratch.

The 5 KPIs every government should track

1. Service delivery — Is the service reaching residents, on time? (e.g., emergency response time, permit turnaround)
2. Financial stewardship — Is the money sound and sustainable? (e.g., general fund balance as a share of spending)
3. Operational efficiency — What does one unit of service cost? (e.g., cost per ton of waste collected)
4. Community outcomes — Are residents' lives measurably better? (e.g., the share of residents who feel safe)
5. Workforce capacity — Can the organization deliver at all? (e.g., vacancy rate, time-to-hire)

Each one maps to an established public-sector framework. That is the floor, not the ceiling — the real work starts with who owns each number. Here is the whole set at a glance.

We have spent more than two decades watching these measures live or die inside real city and county scorecards. Here is what each category measures, a real city that used it, and the one mistake that quietly kills most of them.

1. Service delivery: are residents getting what they pay for, on time?

Service-delivery KPIs measure whether a government actually delivers its core services — and how fast. These are the metrics residents notice first. The pothole. The permit. The 911 call that has to be answered in minutes, not hopes.

Real examples governments publish:

• Emergency response time. Average police and fire/EMS response time is a core benchmark in ICMA's measurement program. If it drifts up, residents are waiting longer in the worst moments of their lives — no other metric on the scorecard matters more viscerally.
• Pothole repair turnaround. San Francisco sets a public 72-hour target on its city performance scorecard; Washington, D.C.'s DDOT commits to three business days.
• Permit and plan-review processing time. Days from application to decision — the number every contractor and resident actually cares about. When it doubles, construction stalls and the city's tax base stalls with it.
• Pavement Condition Index (PCI). A 0–100 score for road quality, published openly by cities like San Francisco.

In ICMA's taxonomy these are output and outcome measures. In a public-sector Balanced Scorecard, they live in the internal-process and citizen perspectives.

The City of Bartlett, Tennessee did not pick its KPIs from a framework binder. Chief Administration Officer Steve Sones and his team chose five focus areas residents actually cared about, split them across all 11 city departments, and took the whole plan from zero to a public dashboard in 13 months. “We're not working in silos,” Sones said once it was live. “What ClearPoint and the strategic plan helped us do is bring all that together.”

2. Financial stewardship: is the money sound and sustainable?

Financial-stewardship KPIs answer two questions at once. Can the government pay its bills today? And will it still be standing in ten years? This is where a single, well-chosen number does enormous work.

• General fund balance as a share of expenditures. The GFOA recommends keeping unrestricted general-fund balance of no less than two months — roughly 16.7% — of regular operating revenues or expenditures. It is the most-cited number in government finance for a reason: it is the cushion that absorbs a bad year. Drop below it, and one recession or one lawsuit forces service cuts.
• Cost of government per capita. Total spending divided by population — the simplest measure of what government costs each resident.
• Debt service ratio. Debt payments as a share of revenue, so today's borrowing does not strangle tomorrow's services.
• Budget execution rate. How much of the adopted budget was actually spent as planned — a quiet tell for whether the plan was real.
• Pension funded ratio. Plan assets as a share of liabilities. Track the trend; resist the myth of a single "healthy" line — even the 80% benchmark is one that actuaries caution against.

In the government Balanced Scorecard, finance is reframed as stewardship — not the bottom line, but the enabler of everything else. Start with the fund-balance ratio. If you publish only one financial KPI, publish that one.

3. Operational efficiency: what does one unit of service cost?

Efficiency KPIs connect the money to the work. They answer a single, uncomfortable question: what does it cost to deliver one unit of service? Two cities can spend the same and get wildly different results. Efficiency measures show you which one you are.

• Cost per ton of solid waste collected. A staple of ICMA's solid-waste benchmarking — and a clean way to compare your operation to peers. A city paying $95 a ton next to a peer paying $60 has found either a contract to renegotiate or a route map to redraw.
• Cost per capita, by service. What parks, or policing, or road maintenance costs each resident.
• Fleet availability and work-order backlog. How much of the fleet is actually on the road, and how deep the maintenance queue runs.
• Share of IT problems resolved within 24 hours. The back-office metric that quietly decides whether every other department can do its job.

ICMA calls these efficiency measures — ratios that relate efforts (the inputs) to accomplishments (the outputs). They are the bridge between your finance KPIs and your service KPIs. And they are the ones that survive a budget hearing.

4. Community outcomes: are residents' lives actually better?

Outcome KPIs are the hardest to measure and the most important to track. They answer the only question that ultimately matters: did conditions in the community actually improve? Not whether the government was busy. Whether life got better.

• Resident satisfaction. The National Community Survey measures resident sentiment across ten livability domains — safety, mobility, economy, environment, and more — with national benchmarks to compare against.
• Share of residents who feel safe. A perception outcome that often tells you more than the raw crime count — crime can fall while fear rises, and the fear is what empties a downtown after 8pm.
• Crime rate per 1,000 residents. The classic public-safety outcome.
• Environmental and quality-of-life measures. Air and water quality, park acres per capita, traffic fatalities per 100,000.

This is the perspective a government Balanced Scorecard moves to the top. For a business, the customer serves the bottom line. For a city, the resident is the bottom line. Which is exactly why the next distinction matters so much.

5. Workforce capacity: can the organization deliver at all?

The first four KPIs are impossible without this one. Workforce KPIs measure whether the government has the people to do the work at all — and right now, many do not.

• Vacancy rate. The share of budgeted positions sitting empty. The National League of Cities has documented a deepening talent crunch across city government. A 15% vacancy rate in public works is why the pothole KPI misses — the two numbers are the same story.
• Employee turnover. How fast experience walks out the door.
• Time-to-hire. Days from posting to filled — the metric that decides whether a vacancy is a blip or a hole.
• Training hours per employee. Whether the organization is building capacity or just burning it.

In Balanced Scorecard terms, this is the learning-and-growth foundation — the people, skills, and systems everything else stands on. Skip it, and your service KPIs will quietly miss for reasons no service report can explain.

What these KPIs look like on a real dashboard

A KPI list is a plan. A dashboard is a promise — the place where the five categories stop being theory and start being a Tuesday-morning meeting. Here is what a city's public-facing view typically looks like, one tile per category:

The demo above is fake. These are not:

• City of Bartlett, TN — five focus areas across 11 departments, live for every resident to inspect, built in 13 months.
• City of Germantown, TN — the dashboard behind Germantown Forward 2030 and its eight key performance areas, updated on a quarterly review cadence.
• Sugar Land TX, Fort Worth, and Olathe also publish ClearPoint-powered community dashboards — status icons, trend charts, and the underlying measures one click deep.

Notice what a public dashboard changes: the KPI stops being an internal spreadsheet cell and becomes a public commitment. Skipping an update is no longer invisible. That social pressure — more than any software feature — is what keeps the numbers fresh.

What is the difference between an output and an outcome?

An output measures activity — how many. An outcome measures result — whether anything got better. It is the single most important distinction in government measurement, and the one most KPI lists get wrong.

Most metric lists lean hard on outputs — permits issued, inspections completed, programs delivered — because they are easy to count. That is the trap. A rising activity number feels like progress, even when nothing in the community actually improved.

The classic cautionary tale is the DARE program. As the National League of Cities tells it, cities spent years counting how many students completed DARE — a clean output number that always went up. The actual goal — lowering youth drug use — was an outcome. Research later found the program did not move it. The counter looked like accountability. It was activity wearing accountability's coat.

We have watched a version of this inside our own customer base. Before ClearPoint, the City of Germantown, Tennessee tracked performance in disconnected spreadsheets and argued over whose numbers were right. After it built its plan around nine performance areas and a public dashboard, the argument changed shape: fewer fights over data accuracy, more questions about whether outcomes were actually moving. That shift in the room — not a new framework — is a large part of why Germantown became one of only four U.S. municipalities ever to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

This is why the standard-setters push hard toward outcomes. GASB's guidance on performance reporting says it should focus primarily on measures of service accomplishments — outputs and outcomes. A useful test for any KPI: if you hit the number, does a resident's life actually improve? If not, you are tracking effort, not effect.

How many KPIs should a city actually track?

The honest answer from the data: far fewer than you do, and nobody manages to. We pulled the live scorecards of 165 US cities, counties, and municipal agencies on ClearPoint in August 2026 and counted every active measure. The distribution is not what the listicles describe.

Read the top row again: 1.2% of local governments track fewer than 25 KPIs, and none at all track fewer than 10. The 25th percentile is 99 measures. The 90th percentile is 1,955. A "top 10 KPIs for cities" article is not describing a lean, disciplined municipality — it is describing nobody.

Size explains part of it, but not in a straight line. Small governments with fewer than 25 licensed users hold around 105 measures. Mid-size governments — 25 to 49 users, the classic city-manager-plus-department-heads setup — jump to 540. That is the moment a performance program goes from one person's spreadsheet to every department reporting, and the measure count multiplies with it.

The more useful question is not how many but how many per goal. Here the pattern is clean and unflattering.

Governments with focused portfolios attach 2.0 measures to each strategic objective. Governments with 1,000 or more KPIs attach 6.3 — over three times as many. The number of strategic objectives barely moves between the two groups; only the measuring does. Sprawl is not a sign of a more ambitious plan. It is the same plan, measured six ways, by people who then have six times as much to keep current — which is precisely how you arrive at 56% of KPIs going a full year without a data point.

The working rule we would defend: one to two measures per objective, every one of them with a named owner, before you add a 143rd. If you cannot name the person who updates a KPI and the date they last did, that KPI is decoration.

Why most government KPIs fail — and the one fix that works

Most governments do not have a KPI problem. They have an ownership problem. The metrics get chosen. The dashboard gets built. And then nobody is on the hook to keep it true.

We have watched it play out across the ClearPoint platform, where more than 150 cities and counties run their strategy. Look at the city-and-county data on its own, and the pattern is remarkably consistent. It is also not pretty.

Read those three bars together and the story is clear. Three in four objectives have nobody's name on them. Two in three are never given a status, even once. More than half of the KPIs themselves go a full year without a fresh number. The plan is not wrong. It is unattended.

The cost shows up downstream. Across the same governments, fewer than one in five projects ever gets marked complete. KPIs that nobody owns do not just go stale — they quietly stop steering the work they were built to guide.

Why smaller cities have it worse

We cut the same research dataset by scorecard size — a rough proxy for city size, since bigger governments simply track more. The pattern is not subtle.

Staleness barely moves — it sits between 45% and 52% no matter how big the government is. Ownership does not. The smallest governments in our dataset are nearly twice as likely to leave a KPI unowned as a mid-size government is.

Our read: it is not that small cities care less. It is that mid-size and large governments are more likely to have someone whose actual job is performance management. Germantown, Tennessee is the case that makes the point — a Senior Budget & Performance Analyst owns the numbers full-time, and ownership follows the org chart, not the org's good intentions.

“When I pulled the ownership numbers by scorecard size, I expected them to flatten out somewhere past the small cities. They didn't. The smallest governments in our data are nearly twice as likely to leave a KPI unowned as a mid-size government — not because they care less, but because nobody on staff owns performance management as their actual job. That's the fix hiding in the data: it's not a software problem, it's a staffing one.”

Source: segmented cut of ClearPoint's research dataset of 20,582 analyzed strategic plans, local-government scorecards only, demo and training records excluded. Small tier = 35 organizations / 1,886 measures; medium and large tiers = 37 organizations each. The small-tier figure is directional given the sample size.

Here is the part that should change how you build your scorecard. The fix is not a better framework. It is a name.

One assignment roughly doubles the odds that an objective is actually moving. Not a new dashboard. Not a new strategy offsite. A person, by name, who reports the number on a schedule. That is the whole difference between a KPI that runs a city and a KPI that decorates a PDF.

So here is the rule we would put on the wall — and it runs against most performance advice, which tells you to track more. Five KPIs someone actually owns will tell you more than eighty that nobody does. If a metric has no owner, it is not a KPI yet. It is a wish with a number attached. Before you add the next one, give the last one a name.

This is also where the tooling earns its keep. Choosing five strong KPIs is a planning exercise. Keeping them owned, fresh, and visible quarter after quarter is an operating one — and it is exactly what performance management for government is built to do. A purpose-built strategy and KPI platform for local government updates each metric once. From that single source, the council report, the public dashboard, and the internal review all refresh together. The owner manages the work, not the spreadsheet — you can see how that works in a short demo.

How to choose, structure, and review a local government KPI

Before the full library, the mechanics — because the list below is a menu, not a plan. Choosing badly from a good menu is still a bad plan.

How do you choose measures that reflect performance?

Start from the objective, never from the metric. For each strategic objective in your plan, ask what would have to be true for a resident to say it worked — then measure that. Choose one or two measures per objective, not the six the data shows sprawling governments end up with. Prefer the measure you can actually collect on a repeating cadence over the theoretically better one you will collect once and abandon.

Balance leading and lagging indicators. Lagging indicators (crime rate, graduation rate, fund balance) tell you whether you got there; they move slowly and confirm the past. Leading indicators (foot patrol hours, permit review turnaround, vacancy rate) tell you whether you are on the way; they move fast enough to act on. A scorecard of pure lagging indicators is a history book. A scorecard of pure leading indicators never proves anything mattered.

How should a KPI be structured?

Use SMART as a formatting test, not a philosophy: Specific (it names one thing), Measurable (a number, with a defined calculation), Attainable (a target a department could actually hit), Realistic (given the budget and headcount you actually have), and Timely (a reporting frequency and a deadline).

Then add the two fields SMART leaves out and our data says decide everything: a named owner — a person, not a department — and an update cadence with a next-due date. A KPI without those two fields is the 75% case.

How should you report on and review KPIs?

Set a fixed review rhythm and hold it: monthly for operational measures at department level, quarterly for the strategic scorecard with the leadership team, annually for the plan itself. The review meeting should discuss the measures that are off track and the ones that are stale — not walk the entire list. Report the same numbers publicly that you report internally; the discipline of a public dashboard is what keeps the internal one honest.

What is government performance management?

Government performance management is the discipline of using KPIs to hold a public organization accountable for delivering its mission. It turns a strategic plan into measured, owned, and regularly reviewed results — the connective tissue between what a government promised and what residents actually get. The five categories above are what you measure. Performance management is how you keep measuring it after the launch meeting ends.

If you want a deeper bench of metrics to draw from, the full list of 143 measures below breaks them down by department, and our city KPI benchmarks show how your numbers compare to peers.

The full list: 143 local government KPIs by category

The five categories above are the lens. Underneath them sits the full bench: 143 individual measures spanning 14 municipal functions — arts & culture, building, citizen engagement, economic development, education, environment, finance, housing, human resources, information technology, parks & recreation, public works, safety, and transportation. Every measure below is defined, so you can lift one straight into a scorecard without rewriting it.

One warning before you scroll. Given what the data above shows about sprawl, this list is deliberately a menu. Two-thirds of local governments already track more measures than it contains. Use it to find the right measure for an objective you already have — not to find more objectives.

Service delivery — 26 measures

Drawn from the Building, Public Works, and Transportation functions. These answer whether the service reached the resident, on time.

Building

• Value of Commercial Projects Constructed: The value of new commercial projects constructed is a key measure that allows you to trace the amount of new commercial investment in a municipality. It is calculated by adding all of the estimated costs of construction values on building permits in a given time frame.
• Total Number of Permits Issued: The total number of building permits issued indicates the amount of construction occurring in any given year in a municipality.
• Total Number of Inspections Performed: This metric looks at the number of construction projects completed in any given year in a municipality.
• Percentage of Historic Preservation Cost Funded by Municipality Funds: Calculating this percentage helps take account of how much of the funding for historical preservation is coming from outside sources as compared to what’s coming from municipal resources.
• Total Permit Revenue: Summing permit revenue aggregates the dollar amount a municipality brings in from building permits, contractor registration, violation search, and lien settlement requests.
• Percentage of Plans Approved After First Review: This measure looks at the rate at which plans are approved on the first attempt, in order to better understand the speed of the review process.

Public Works

• Percentage of Capital Projects Completed on Time: Observing the percentage of capital projects completed on time is a way to see how successful the municipality is at opening new facilities in a timely fashion.
• Percentage of Capital Projects Completed Within Project Budget: This is a critical measurement that relates directly to maintaining the municipal budget.
• Percentage of Projects Initiated Within 12 Months of Funding Authorization: The percentage of projects initiated within one year shows the speed and efficiency with which capital projects move through the appropriate pipelines and go into construction phase.
• Total Miles of Municipal Streets Paved: This performance indicator is measured in part by the miles of municipal streets paved annually.
• Total Miles of Municipal Sidewalk Repaired: Sidewalk maintenance productivity can be reflected by the miles of sidewalks maintained per year.
• Number of Water Line Breaks: Tallying the number of water line breaks is a way to assess the proactive water line maintenance efforts of the municipality.
• Percentage of Bridges with a Sufficiency Rating of 50%: Using the Federal Highway Administration (FHA) bridge sufficiency formula, municipalities can assess the percentage of bridges that meet sufficiency standards.
• Average Number of Customer Complaints per Week: This measure offers a method for tracking the resident satisfaction of the public works department.
• Percentage of Resident Complaints Addressed Within 24 Hours: The percentage of resident complaints addressed in 24 hours measures the speed at which resident concerns are acknowledged and logged into the system.
• Percentage of Street Lights in Service: Observing the percentage of street lamps in service is a way to shine light on the effectiveness of inspections and work order response times.

Transportation

• Driver Courtesy Satisfaction Rating: Driver courtesy satisfaction rating can be gathered in a survey, and can help evaluate the happiness of residents with work commutes.
• Passenger Trips on Buses per Gallon of Fuel: Calculating total passenger trips per gallon of fuel provides valuable information in regard to the costs and value of providing municipal bus services.
• Public Transportation Satisfaction Rating: Overall public transportation satisfaction can be measured with a survey, and can show how happy residents are with public transportation options (and how likely they are to use those options).
• Average Speed on Neighborhood Streets: Tracking average speed on neighborhood streets reveals long-term variation in traffic on municipal small streets.
• Average Speed on Arterial Streets: Following the trends of the average speed on arterial streets gives a good indication of the increases and decreases of traffic on important road sections.
• Average Hours to Remove Snow from Streets: For municipalities that receive significant snowfall, marking the hours it takes to get roads plowed after a snowfall is a good way to benchmark and monitor the snow removal processes.
• Percentage of Commuters Using Public Transportation: This metric indicates how effective the department is at providing alternatives to car and pedestrian traffic.
• Walkability Score: Walkability score is a benchmark for comparison with other cities, measuring the “pedestrian friendliness” of a municipality.
• Resident Satisfaction with Municipal Traffic: A survey of resident satisfaction can evaluate happiness with the traffic in a municipality, and help align municipal goals with the traffic concerns of the residents.
• Percentage of Commuters Biking or Walking: Noting the percentage of residents who walk or bike to work is a way to estimate the non-public transportation alternatives to car commuting.

Financial stewardship — 10 measures

Drawn from the Finance function. These answer whether the money is sound and sustainable.

• Budgeting Ratio: The budgeting ratio is calculated by dividing the ongoing operating expenditure by the total ongoing operating revenues.
• Real Estate Assessment to Sales Ratio (ASR): The ASR compares the assessed values of local real estate to the selling prices of normal, single-family sales of real property. A ratio of 100% is ideal, because it shows that property was appropriately assessed.
• Real Estate Coefficient of Dispersion (COD): The COD provides a metric of the variation for individual assessment ratios around the median level of assessment. In other words, the lower the rate, the more fair the spread of the tax burden. (15% is the industry benchmark.)
• Debt per Capita: Debt per capita measures the condition of municipal debt in relation to the total population.
• Full-Time Employees per Capita: Looking at the number of municipal staff in relation to total municipal population provides a ratio that can be compared to other similar municipalities. This helps determine whether the staff size is too small or large for a given population.
• Number of Grant Compliance Violations: Exposing the number of grant compliance violations allows for tracking compliance improvement over time.
• Number of Employees Trained in Grant Writing: Keeping tabs on the number of employees trained in grant writing allows municipalities to maximize grant-seeking activities.
• Total Number of Audit Findings: This measure evaluates the findings in the financial auditing process in a municipality.
• Bond Rating: Municipal bond rating, as determined by agencies such as Moody's, Standard & Poor's, and the National Bond Rating Agency, are indicators of the financial stability of local governments.
• Total Revenue Generated: This measure is an aggregation of all sources of municipal revenue, and the basis for building the municipal budget.

Operational efficiency — 6 measures

Drawn from the Information Technology function. These answer what one unit of service costs to deliver.

• Number of Major Network Outages: This metric tracks the incidents where a certain percentage of users (i.e. 30%) were negatively affected for a certain period of time (i.e. 3 hours).
• Satisfaction with Municipal Website: Satisfaction with the municipal website, as measured in a survey, reflects the overall quality and user-friendliness of this particularly important means of communication with residents.
• Percent of Repair Calls Resolved Within 24 Hours: This measure looks at the efficiency of the IT department in supporting vital communication networks and solving problems for citizens as they arise.
• Average Number of Hours to Complete Service Desk Request: The average number of hours it takes to complete a service desk request is a metric that tracks the improvements (or lack thereof) in service desk efficiency over time.
• Backup Success Rate: The backup success rate indicates the percentage of total backup jobs for protected servers that ran successfully.
• IT Customer Satisfaction Rate: IT customer satisfaction rate measures the percentage of customers happy with their interaction with the IT service desk.

Community outcomes — 91 measures

Drawn from Arts & Culture, Citizen engagement, Economic Development, Education, Environment, Housing, Parks & Recreation, and Safety. This is the largest bucket by far — and, per the sprawl data above, the one local governments most consistently over-track. Take a few, not the set.

Arts & Culture

• Total Attendance at Festivals and Cultural Events: Attendance for festivals and events in a municipality demonstrates the engagement of residents with the broader cultural community.
• Number of Performances at Performing Arts Center: Recording the number of events at a community performing arts center illustrates the long-term use and viability of the facility.
• Average Percentage of Capacity Filled at Performing Arts Center: Observing the average percentage of capacity filled during events at a public performing arts center is a good way to gauge community interest and engagement with that particular institution.
• Percentage of Dates Booked in Arena: Watching the number of available dates booked in a municipal arena helps to assess the effectiveness of utilizing that piece of infrastructure to benefit the quality of life in a community.
• Number of Festivals and Cultural Events: The number of festivals and cultural events held in a given time frame is a good metric for evaluating the cultural, artistic, and entertainment options that might attract residents and tourists to a municipality.

Citizen

• Number of Subscribers and Followers on Social Media: Keeping tabs on the number of subscribers and followers to an organization’s social media accounts helps you understand how many residents are actively engaged online.
• Number of Town Hall Participants: This measure demonstrates how engaged residents are with the functions and policy of a city hall.
• Resident Satisfaction with Appearance of Municipality: A survey that evaluates how satisfied residents are with the overall appearance of the community can provide insight into the importance of an investment in “municipal beautification.”
• Resident Satisfaction with Municipality as Place to Live: A survey that evaluates how satisfied residents are with the municipality as a place to live can help dictate the direction and investment(s) of the municipal government.
• Poverty Rate: Poverty rates offer insight into the status of a municipality as a place that fosters upward mobility. This measure also acts as a benchmark against state and national poverty rates.
• Resident Satisfaction of Municipality as a Workplace: This measure looks at the feelings of residents toward the municipality's economic outlook; it can be captured in a survey that measures citizen happiness.
• Number of Active Municipal Mobile App Users: Mobile applications have become an increasingly popular tool for communication. Taking account of active municipal app downloads and users is crucial to understanding effectiveness of this new communication method.
• Resident Satisfaction with Municipal Communication: Satisfaction with the overall communication of the municipality reflects general feelings that cannot be captured by other quantitative measures, and is important to understanding the true success of information distribution.
• Voter Turnout: Voter turnout for local elections is an important indicator of community engagement and local government participation.
• Number of Municipal Website Visitors: A municipality’s website is one of the main tools of communication and collaboration. Observing the number of website visits in a given time period helps to understand its effectiveness.
• Median Household Income: Median household income is a vital indicator of general economic conditions in a given area.

Economic Development

• Change in Value of Commercial Property: The change in the value of commercial property indicates the current state of the commercial real estate market in a municipality. This measure is also correlated with the condition of the municipal economy.
• Number of Employers at Municipal Job Fairs: The total number of employers at municipal job fairs indicates the relative number of job openings in a municipality.
• Number of Attendees at Municipal Job Fair: The number of attendees at a municipal job fair is a reflection on the number of residents actively looking for jobs.
• Total Tourism Tax Dollars: Total tourism tax income is a metric that reflects the economic impact of tourism on a municipality.
• Unemployment Rate: The percentage of individuals who are of working age, who are (a) not in school, and (b) actively seeking work, provides a snapshot of the economic health of the people in the community.
• Number of Jobs in Municipality: Tallying the number of jobs in the municipality reveals growth or decline in employment opportunities.
• Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Municipality: Real GDP measures the economic production of a municipality over time, adjusting for inflation by setting a standard year's prices to compare levels in different years.
• Municipality-Wide Commercial Vacancy Rate: The municipality-wide commercial vacancy rate reports on the availability of commercial property, and reflects on the state of the municipal economy.
• Number of New Businesses: The number of new businesses is a measure that sizes up economic development. This is directly related to increases in municipal revenue.
• Number of Business License Renewals: Keeping tabs on returning businesses is a way to evaluate the business climate and commercial retention rate.
• Number of New Jobs Created: The number of new jobs created is an indicator that shows growth in the economy of a municipality; it’s directly linked to the unemployment rate.

Education

• Percentage of Residents with a GED or High School Diploma: Following the percentage of residents who have obtained high school diplomas or GEDs is a good way to review overall secondary education effectiveness.
• Percentage of On-Time Bus Arrivals at School: Identifying this percentage helps school districts better understand school transportation logistics, and what they need to make improvements to.
• Total Library Use per Capita: Tracking the amount of library use per resident can help reveal how beneficial and accessible its resources are.
• Private High School Graduation Rate: The graduation rate at private schools allows municipalities to understand the schools’ academic performances (and offers a helpful point of comparison to public school success).
• Percentage of Residents Rating Public Schools Excellent or Good: Resident satisfaction with public schools can be measured in a survey. The results can assist in quantifying aspects that increase or decrease positive perception with public schools. It’s important to note that this is directly tied the attraction and retention of young families to the area.
• Percentage of Residents with a Bachelor's Degree or Higher: Higher educational attainment levels are an important metric to assess the socio-economic condition of the area.
• Public High School Graduation Rate: This is an important measure for gauging the condition of academic success and effectiveness of the education system as a whole.

Environment

• Percentage of Hybrid Buses: Dividing the number of hybrid buses over the total number of city buses gives you this measure. It helps illustrate the presence (or lack) of environmentally-friendly municipal investments.
• Landfill Diversion Rate: Landfill diversion rate measures the proportion of total municipal waste diverted to landfill alternatives (like recycling centers and waste-to-energy plants).
• Miles of Roadside Litter Collected: Estimating miles of roadside litter collected determines the extent of cleanup and area-wide beautification efforts in a given time period.
• Percentage of Good Air Quality Days: The overall air quality can be calculated by taking the total of days in which the air quality meets the standard of "good" (as determined by the Air Quality Index) and dividing it by the total number of days in the given time period (usually one year).
• Tons of Community-Recycled Composted Materials: Determining how many tons of recycled materials a community discards in a given time frame is an indicator of growth in waste diversion.
• Municipality-Wide Greenhouse Gas Emissions per Capita: As a municipality becomes more sustainable through a variety of initiatives, one way to track progress is by monitoring the decrease (or increase, if there is one) of greenhouse gas emissions per capita.
• Number of New Trees Planted in Public Places: Tallying the number of new trees planted each year is a good way to measure an activity that helps create a more beautiful and sustainable area.
• Percentage of Municipal Facilities Incorporating Energy Efficient Upgrades: This measure is a method used for looking at the increase of cost-cutting, sustainable initiatives in area-wide infrastructure.
• Average Days to Close a Code Violation Case: Average days to close a code violation is a metric that represents the progression toward a more efficient code enforcement process.
• Water Usage per Capita: This measure indicates the effectiveness of long-term water conservation strategies.

Housing

• Number of Supported Affordable Housing Units Created per Year: The number of affordable houses created with support from the local government tracks efforts to maintain the affordability of living in an area.
• Amount of Housing Relief Distributed: The dollar amount of housing relief provided by the municipality is also an effective illustration of municipal involvement for promoting affordable living.
• Number of Residents Assisted in Housing Relief Programs: Looking at the number of actual recipients of housing relief can provide insight into the number of residents impacted by housing relief programs.
• Percentage of Residents Satisfied with Affordable Housing: Evaluating the overall satisfaction of affordable housing helps gauge performance in providing high-quality, affordable housing to residents.
• Housing Opportunity Index Percentage: This measure requires observing the number of new and existing homes which were affordable to families earning the area median income and dividing that by the total number of homes using income and sales prices.
• Number of Municipality-Wide Chronically Homeless Individuals: Exposing the number of chronically-homeless individuals in a given area illustrates the progress (or lack thereof) achieved in helping these individuals into better situations and accommodations.
• Percentage of Households That Pay 30% or More of Income on Housing: The 30% of income toward rent looks at the percentage of municipal households who pay at or above HUD's standard for burdensome housing cost in relation to total household income.
• Number of HUD Eligible First-Time Homebuyers: The number of HUD eligible first-time home buyers ensures adequate, safe, and affordable housing options for residents at or below 80% of area median income (based on data from the Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report by HUD).
• Total Attendance at Neighborhood Meetings: This measure helps disclose the level of community engagement in the municipality.
• Resident Satisfaction with Neighborhood Meetings: Resident satisfaction with neighborhood meetings, taken from a satisfaction survey, can aid in determining whether or not residents find neighborhood meetings informative.

Parks & Recreation

• Recreation Center Attendance: Recreation center attendance tracks the number of people utilizing public recreation centers and reflects their popularity.
• Acres of Park Land: With park land growing or decreasing in size over time, marking the yearly acreage of space can be helpful in tracking long-term availability of park space availability.
• Percentage of Residents Satisfied with Parks: This metric helps determine whether or not the department is doing its job to provide high-quality recreation programs and spaces for its citizens.
• Number of Rounds of Golf Played at Public Courses: In order to create a municipality with accessible and affordable public golf, it is important to keep track of the use of and costs associated with these public golf courses.
• Total Park Attendance: Tracking the total number of park visitors can be used to determine the cost per visit for municipal parks, and whether it needs to increase or decrease.
• Miles of Trails: Total miles of trails in parks is an important metric to estimate because paths are beneficial to promoting healthy, active lifestyles.
• Number of Community Gardens: This metric is helpful to understand the impact of such programs on the community-building, health, and attractiveness of the municipality.
• Percentage of Residents Satisfied with Recreational Options: Surveying resident satisfaction with recreational options ensures that the parks and recreation department is providing programs that align with the interest of community members.
• Percentage of Playgrounds Inspected: This metric helps ensure that equipment is safe for children to use.
• Number of Parks and Recreation Volunteer Hours: Benchmarking the number of parks and recreation volunteer hours serves as a means for observing growth with engaging residents around community parks and recreation projects and initiatives.
• Number of Youth Participating in Summer and Recreational Programs: Counting the number of youth who participate in recreational programs year-round tracks the popularity of public recreational programs.
• Percentage of Residents Who Live Within 10-Minute Walk of Park: The percentage of residents who live within a 10-minute walk to a park evaluates the accessibility of community parks.
• Percentage of Active Space in Use: The percentage of active space in use is an indicator of how utilized the facilities in the parks and recreation departments are.

Safety

• Number of Roadway Accidents: This measure offers a way to identify the success of traffic safety programs and initiatives over time.
• Number of Fires Occurring per 10,000 Residents: The fire incident rate can be measured against national standards to determine the total effectiveness of fire safety.
• Municipal Fire Cost per Capita: Fire loss per capita reveals the amount of damage caused by fires per person in a particular area during a year.
• Injury Rate of Firefighters per Fire: Injury rate of firefighters is closely tied to the severity of fires, and the number of firefighters available at a fire. Therefore, this measure can provide insight into fire prevention success and fire department staffing needs.
• Number of Community Relation Initiatives by Police: Community relation initiatives (like neighborhood meetings) are important for building the trust and respect of citizens and a safe municipality.
• Number of Foot and Bike Patrol Hours: Maximizing the number of hours spent by police on foot and bike patrol helps develop positive and beneficial relationships between law enforcement and community members.
• Number of Hours Spent Interacting with Students in Public School by Police: Tracking time spent by police and school resource officers interacting with students in the schools is an important metric, as it teaches young members of the community about law enforcement and the justice system.
• Civilian Fire Injuries per 100,000 Residents: Civilian fire injuries per 100,000 residents is a measure that keeps tabs on the rate of non-firefighters physically harmed during a fire.
• Number of Fire Prevention Code Violations: Counting the number of fire prevention code violations during routine fire inspections can help identify the effectiveness of fire training and education.
• Total Attendance at Safety Education Programs: This metric counts the number of residents who show up to events like citizen fire safety training, school fire safety programs, and Citizens Emergency Response Team training.
• Immunization Compliance Rate by Age 2: The immunization compliance rate discloses the number of children who have received the recommended shots (4 DTaP, 3 Polio, 1 MMR, 3 HIB, 3 HepB, and 1 VAR) within their first 24 months. This is vital to prevent the spread of disease in the wider community.
• Percentage of Overweight and Obese Children Enrolled in Public School Kindergarten: Recording weight statistics on entry physicals of kindergarteners gauges the health of the community (primarily because these problems in young children have been proven to increase risk of chronic disease later in life).
• Emergency Medical Services Incidents per 1,000 Residents: The relationship between emergency dispatches that meet a certain criteria and the overall population shows the rate in which emergencies occur.
• Number of Violent Crimes: Counting the number of violent crimes is one of the most standard means for determining the overall safety of the municipality and seriousness of crime in the area.
• Number of Non-Violent Crimes: Measuring the total number of non-violent crimes is a way to scope the pervasiveness of white collar crime in a municipality.
• Percentage of Residents Who Feel Safe in Parks: The percentage of residents who indicate that they feel safe in parks is a reflection of the perception of comfort in municipal parks.
• FEMA Community Rating (CRS) Score: The FEMA CRS score can serve as a benchmark of community preparedness for natural disasters.
• Number of Juvenile Arrests: Tracing the number of juvenile arrests illustrates the prevalence of youth criminal activity in a municipality.
• Number of Criminal Investigations: Counting the number of criminal investigations is a method for determining police department activity over time.
• Number of Emergency Response Calls: This metric offers a way to track the long-term trends of fire, rescue, and miscellaneous emergencies.
• Number of Residents Who Feel Safe in Their Neighborhood: Based on a survey, the number of residents who feel safe in their neighborhood helps to determine the overall perception of public safety.
• Percentage of Fire Response Time Within Goal (8 Minutes): The percentage of fire response times that meets the goal time tracks the percentage of fires responded to within 8 minutes of the phone call, the time set by the National Standards for Fire.
• Emergency Medical Service Response Time Within Goal (8 Minutes): This metric tracks the percentage of emergencies successfully responded to within 8 minutes of the phone call, the national standard time.
• Percentage of Public & Private Schools with Fire Drills Conducted: To create an atmosphere of safety for children in school, this measure indicates the percentage of schools where fire drills were successfully conducted (with a goal of 100%).

Workforce capacity — 10 measures

Drawn from the Human Resources function. These answer whether the organization can deliver at all.

• Diversity of New Hires: Using application questions, municipalities can measure the diversity of new hires to make sure that they are promoting an accepting and healthy environment. (Of course, gender, race, and ethnicity are not and should not be used as a factor in hiring decision-making.)
• Diversity of Workforce: Diversity of the overall workforce evaluates the success in retaining a diverse representation in municipal staff. It also reflects the openness and acceptance of the work environment to all types of employees.
• Number of Applications Received: Number of applications received for new positions for local government positions helps weigh the level of interest and success that new job postings are generating.
• Percentage of Positions Filled Internally: Dividing the number of promotions by the number of positions filled reveals the availability of advancement opportunities and the success of internal talent development.
• Employee Satisfaction Index: An employee satisfaction index can be determined by conducting an employee survey and taking into account the number of positive versus negative responses.
• Total Hours of Training Attended: Aggregating combined training hours can indicate how much employee development took place in a given period of time.
• Absenteeism Rate: This rate reveals the percentage of lost work hours due to worker absence.
• Percentage of Performance Evaluations Completed on Time: Percentage of performance evaluations completed on time is a critical component to a successful performance management process.
• Employee Retention Rate: Employee retention rate can be calculated by dividing the number of avoidable separations by the number of regular full-time employees on the staff.
• Number of Incidents per 100,000 Miles Driven: Marking the number of incidents per 100,000 miles driven in a municipal vehicle is important in evaluating safety standards and costs of vehicles.

Frequently asked questions

How many KPIs should a local government track?

Fewer than most do. Across 165 US local governments on ClearPoint in August 2026, the median tracks 394 active measures, the 25th percentile 99, and the 90th percentile 1,955 — and none track fewer than 10, so the common "top 10 KPIs" framing describes no real city. The defensible rule from the same data is one to two measures per strategic objective: focused governments average 2.0 KPIs per objective while those with 1,000+ measures average 6.3, without having more goals to show for it.

Are KPIs and metrics the same thing?

No. Every KPI is a metric, but very few metrics are KPIs. A metric is anything you can count. A KPI is the small subset of metrics tied directly to a strategic objective — the ones where a change in the number should change what someone does. The 143 measures in this article are a library of candidate metrics; the ten or twenty you attach to your objectives, with owners, are your KPIs.

Are KPIs the same as goals?

No. A goal is the destination ("residents feel safe in their neighborhoods"); a KPI is the instrument that tells you how far away you are ("share of residents who report feeling safe after dark"). Goals without KPIs cannot be managed; KPIs without goals are trivia. Every KPI in a working scorecard should be traceable up to a stated objective.

What is a KPI in government?

A KPI (key performance indicator) in government is a quantified measure of whether a public agency is delivering on its mission. Strong government KPIs span five areas: service delivery, financial stewardship, operational efficiency, community outcomes, and workforce capacity. A good one is owned by a named person and updated on a set schedule — not just listed in a plan.

What are the 5 KPIs every government should track?

The five categories of KPI every government should track are: (1) service delivery — e.g., emergency response time; (2) financial stewardship — e.g., general fund balance as a share of spending; (3) operational efficiency — e.g., cost per ton of waste collected; (4) community outcomes — e.g., the share of residents who feel safe; and (5) workforce capacity — e.g., vacancy rate and time-to-hire. Tracking one strong metric in each category gives a complete picture of organizational health.

What is government performance management?

Government performance management is the discipline of using KPIs to hold a public organization accountable for delivering its mission. It connects strategy, budget, and reporting so that goals are measured, owned, and reviewed on a regular cadence — turning a strategic plan into results residents can see.

What is the difference between an output and an outcome measure?

An output measures activity — how many units of service were produced (for example, the number of students who completed a program). An outcome measures the result — whether conditions actually improved (for example, whether youth drug use fell). Government performance standards, including GASB's, direct agencies to focus primarily on outcomes, because activity counts can rise while the real goal goes unmet.

How many local government KPIs are there?

There is no single fixed number, but ClearPoint's library organizes 143 commonly used local-government measures across 14 municipal functions — arts & culture, public works, finance, safety, and more — all of which map onto the five categories above. Most cities track far fewer than that: one or two strong KPIs per objective is the more common, more sustainable pattern.

Where does this data come from?

The ownership and staleness figures on this page come from ClearPoint's own platform data across 150+ cities and counties, drawn from a broader analysis of 20,582 strategic plans. The 143-measure library is a curated set of commonly used local-government KPIs compiled from ClearPoint's work with municipal clients since 2015.

Does city size affect KPI ownership rates?

Yes. In a size-segmented cut of ClearPoint's research dataset, the smallest local governments left 80.5% of KPIs unowned, compared to 45.5% for mid-size governments and 54.7% for large ones. Measure staleness stayed flat around 45–52% regardless of size — smaller governments likely lack a dedicated performance-management role, rather than caring less about their KPIs.

Which cities publish their KPI dashboards publicly?

Cities including Bartlett TN, Germantown TN, Sugar Land TX, Fort Worth TX, and Olathe KS publish live, public-facing KPI dashboards powered by ClearPoint. Residents can see each focus area's status, drill into individual measures, and check when the data was last updated — which is itself a powerful accountability mechanism.

The takeaway

Five numbers will not run a city. But five numbers — one for service, one for money, one for efficiency, one for outcomes, one for the people behind it all — will tell you the truth, every week, while there is still time to act. The categories tell you what to watch. An owner makes it real. Start with five. Give each one a name.