The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, one of the nation’s largest foundations, has awarded a $100,000 grant to the Community Research Council (CRC) as part of Sloan’s program on Performance Assessment of Municipal Governments. CRC will lead a research team including Professors Stephanie Bellar and David Edwards of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Professor John Thomas of Georgia State University to examine how citizens think about city services in Chattanooga and to determine the best ways to track performance of those services.

Funding will also go toward development of citizen based performance measures where data is collected by city residents.

David Eichenthal, the Community Research Council’s President and CEO, said, “This is an important next step in Chattanooga’s efforts to improve the performance of local government. Consistent with the “Chattanooga way,” chattanoogaCITIZEN will give residents a say in just what City government should be focusing on,” said The chattanoogaCITIZEN initiative is designed to complement the City of Chattanooga’s efforts to monitor performance through 311 and chattanoogaRESULTS.

"CRC and its research partners will initially convene focus groups to identify those services performed by City government where results are most important to Chattanooga residents. CRC will also use information from focus groups to help the city assess its newly launched website.

"Following the focus groups, UTC faculty and students will host a series of neighborhood meetings in each of Chattanooga’s nine city Council districts. The objective of the neighborhood meetings will be to determine specific city services where citizens want to know how the city is performing.

"After the focus groups and community meetings, the project team will work to develop new measures of city government performance. UTC students and community volunteers, working with CRC, will then begin collecting performance data.

"A Citizen Advisory Group is in formation to act as a sounding board throughout the nine month project. The advisory group will convene regularly to review the focus group scripts, neighborhood meeting agendas and the proposed performance indicators."

For more than 40 years, CRC -- a United Way funded agency -- has served the community by providing important data to guide government agencies and non-profits in shaping local public policy, officials said. Now, under new leadership and with a new Board of Directors, CRC is expanding its mission to become the premier source for independent data and policy analysis and research in our region. CRC will focus on five specific policy areas: community and economic development, crime and public safety, health, urban governance and youth. The Sloan Foundation grant is the largest national foundation grant CRC has ever received.

Individuals interested in participating on the chattanoogaCITIZEN advisory group can contact CRC at 267-7766x13 or by sending email to chattanoogacitizen@researchcouncil.net.