Mayor Cara Spencer’s administration today expanded the City of St. Louis’ public performance tracking system, CityStat, sharing even more key performance indicators on city services with the public.
The city added the Department of Health, the Department of Human Services and the Towing Division to the list of nine departments and divisions already included in the CityStat initiative that Mayor Spencer publicly launched on March 31. The latest version of CityStat now also includes entirely new datasets for the Citizens’ Service Bureau and the Forestry Division.
As promised at the launch, the city’s quarterly update of all CityStat datapoints is now available, showing progress in key areas and enabling both the city and the public to easily understand where improvement is needed.
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“By making more and more performance data on city services available to the public and our departments, we are setting ourselves up for better accountability and better results,” said Mayor Cara Spencer. “This is about transparency, accountability and improving the city services that St. Louisans rely on.”
Areas showing improvement
Areas showing improvement in this past quarter include, but are not limited to:
- The Traffic & Lighting Division exceeded its goal of closing more than 80 percent of requests for lights going out on an entire block within 24 hours. This is the first time the division has exceeded that goal.
- The Street Division’s repair times for potholes in alleys and residential streets both exceeded the goal of 80 percent of requests completed on time, with 98 percent of alley potholes completed on time and 91 percent of residential street potholes completed on time. Repair times for potholes in major streets continue to fall short of the 80 percent goal, but are moving in the right direction. Additional focus will be placed on major street potholes in the coming months.
- The Parks Division is showing rapid improvement following years of being far behind its goal of meeting 80 percent of requests on time. In 2024 and 2025, the division met less than 30 percent of requests on time, but the division showed improvement every quarter of 2025. In the quarter that just ended, the Parks Division reached an all-time high of 67.5 percent, nearing its goal.
Areas needing improvement
CityStat also shows other areas where the city aims to do better, including:
- The Building Division has continued to see lagging performance in timely building permit issuance following the launch of the online permit application system in February. This may be due to the learning curve, the increased application volume since the portal launch, and several highly complex applications. The city will continue exploring ways to improve the speed in this area before the next CityStat update.
- The Water Division continues to fall short of its goal of repairing 80 percent of water main breaks within eight hours, reaching 64.2 percent in this past quarter. This is slightly up from the first quarter of the year, when 61 percent of water main breaks were repaired within eight hours, but that improvement is likely attributable to more cooperative weather conditions. The Spencer administration and the Board of Aldermen are addressing this issue by investing in aging water infrastructure through allocating significant ARPA and Rams dollars and securing sustainable long-term funding through the recently signed water rate increase bill.
