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City Management, Planning

Community in the heart of Treasure Coast

The coasts of Florida are much more than a place for snowbirds or retirees. Those who call the beaches of Port St. Lucie home are understood with rich community data to help support a thriving community year-round and for generations to come.

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The Challenge

For the city of Port St. Lucie, Florida, the vision is simple but monumental: be a leader in innovative solutions that put residents first.

Annual resident surveys helped Port St. Lucie unpack this sentiment. But they wanted to move their innovation beyond a survey. The team envisioned a world where resident feedback – and data-driven priorities – drove the strategic planning process.

Armed with early resident feedback and an upcoming City Council retreat, Port St. Lucie knew they had an opportunity to weave their community’s feedback into a plan for their community’s future.

Their existing strategic plan was made up of static spreadsheets, PDFs, and slide decks. The team knew that with all of the advancements in available technology and data, a PDF didn’t exactly scream innovation.

"We're in this data renaissance right now. How do we become more proactive rather than reactive?” said Kate Parmelee, Deputy City Manager for Strategic Initiatives & Innovation.

We're in this data renaissance right now. How do we become more proactive rather than reactive?
Kate Parmelee

Deputy City Manager for Strategic Initiatives & Innovation, Port St. Lucie

Kate pushed her team to find a platform that could do it all: display the current state of the community, showcase progress on key metrics, and keep the status of existing community improvement projects all tied together. On top of it all, it needed to be accessible and understandable to a general audience.

When you’re in a data renaissance, you look for more than a platform. You look for a trusted partner to make innovative moves with you.

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The Solution

Port St. Lucie has everything you’d look for in a team of Changemakers. They were eager to understand community feedback, connected to departments across the team, and technically savvy.

What they didn’t have was time. With mySidewalk, those technical training barriers were easily eliminated, allowing the Port St. Lucie team to focus on the narrative and impact. User-friendly visualization tools and an expansive data library made building an evergreen strategic plan that would actually grab attention finally possible. The team could now focus on how to communicate those data insights.

“Our dashboard really is a storytelling guide,” Sabrina McLeod, of the City Manager's Office said, “We're doing so much and we wanted our (data) renaissance to see what we're doing. [Being able] to put the strategic plan in a format not only for our Council but for others in the community to see, play around with, and get particular data points when they're talking about our city to say – look at what we're doing."

Now, not only does this dashboard show the results from resident surveys, but it also shows supportive data, the status of key performance metrics, and all the ways the city is working to address its most pressing issues.

For example, the dashboard includes a section on vibrant neighborhoods that shows:

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Resident Satisfaction Status

Quality of Life

Port St. Lucie leverages geographic granularity and demographics to understand resident satisfaction at the local level.

Port-St. Lucie_Neighborhood & Community Environment
Communicating Strategy

Neighborhood & Community Engagement

Port St. Lucie communicates efforts that the city is undertaking and goals it has to improve engagement.

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Transparency & Progress

Key Metrics

How the city is performing on key metrics like neighborliness, overall quality of life, and code enforcement increases the trust Port St. Lucie has between its residents.

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Building Community

Opportunities for Inclusion

Using their dashboard to promote ways for residents to get involved, such as joining the NICE project or learning more about their city in the City University tool, helps residents understand data is more than numbers.

“It’s always good to have a visual,” Salome Angrand, Executive Assistant for the City of Port St. Lucie explains. “With all the reports and emails and everything that we put out, we want to be able to find a way that is easy, simple and beautiful to show not only just to our residents but even for us.”

About Port St. Lucie

Centrally located along Florida’s east coast, the City of Port St. Lucie has experienced tremendous growth in recent years because of its economic vitality, cultural diversity, recreational activities and public safety. Today, they are the sixth-largest city in Florida with nearly 240,000 residents.

Visit their website →

Our Partnership

mySidewalk Builder Enterprise

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The Outcomes

With mySidewalk, they are doing just that. Their strategic planning process won them the Voice of the People Award for transformation in community engagement.

"[We’ve] done webinars and presentations and talks with other cities and communities about strategic planning in general and the process because our strategic plan has been such a success,” Sabrina explained.

In addition to this praise from external stakeholders, the city regularly refers residents to the strategic planning dashboard.

Long-term residents will often voice an issue to the department and be directed to the dashboard where they can learn about initiatives and priorities that address their concerns. Additionally, new residents are encouraged to visit the dashboard to learn about what is coming for the city in the future and what changes to expect as well as goals the city has already met.

Kate only sees the impact of this work growing within the City and with mySidewalk’s technology.

“I think there are departments that want to do this analysis,” she said. “But the time to build that capacity in a department is going to take years. Departments have the intent but they don’t have all the data skills to do it. This is a chance for us to take a little bit and move the needle.”

Departments have the intent but they don't have the data skills to do it. This is a chance for us to take a little bit and move the needle.
Kate Parmlee

Deputy City Manager for Strategic Initiatives & Innovation, Port St. Lucie

The City of Port St. Lucie and mySidewalk are united in our commitment to fostering positive change, demonstrated through the innovation and impact of this strategic plan. This partnership exemplifies how strategic planning, coupled with powerful data visualization, can effectively address community challenges and inspire progress.

The standard has been set for how cities can engage and empower their residents, proving that with the right tools and vision, transformative change is within reach.

Save Time & Money
Save Time Wrangling Data
Avoid searching through hundreds of public sources to supplement resident voice.
9-1
Tell Stronger Stories
Visualize selected metrics in a way that is helpful for residents and city staff to see how city initiatives align with identified priorities.
Become a Source of Truth
Become a Source of Truth
Create an evergreen platform with the most current data, programs, and priorities to share with both internal stakeholders and the community.
Make-Data Driven Impact
Make Data-Driven Impact
Leverage this evergreen platform to lift community voice and support initiatives inspired by this voice.
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