Three Hermiston city departments have taken part in self-evaluations as part of the city’s move to improve services.

The street department, parks and recreation and the police department participated in the International City-County Management Association’s Center for Performance Measurement program.

The departments followed the process throughout the past year, taking a number of surveys and using other measurement tools to gauge success.

Hermiston is one of nine Oregon cities to join the program, and the only one east of the Cascades.

“We’re unique in Eastern Oregon by even participating in this program,” said City Manager Ed Brookshier. “We are well ahead of cities our size by even taking this step.”

The process has made department heads look differently at how they work, especially in the street department.

Ron Sivey, street superintendent, said the department’s concrete results might not be visible until next year. However, the process forced the department to rethink its way of measuring costs, as the program’s measurements work in “lane miles.” Hermiston’s street department typically figured its costs by the hour.

The street department spent much of the past year measuring every street – all 185 lane miles, Sivey said – which will be used to compare operation costs against other cities’ next year.

Sivey said he also looks forward to gathering resident surveys on streets’ conditions.

Hermiston’s Parks and Recreation Department has used the program’s methods to compare its standing among other U.S. and Northwest cities. Director Ivan Anderholm said Hermiston fared well in several categories, including per-capita cost of its parks, staffing levels and resident surveys.

In overall customer satisfaction, 92 percent of Hermiston residents rated the city’s parks and programs either “excellent” or “good.” The average of other U.S. cities included in the study landed at 85 percent.

Anderholm said the program will be useful for the parks department to learn from other cities’ methods and successes, possibly in areas where Hermiston is lacking.

“If I see something that’s completely different … I can contact them,” Anderholm said. “That’s what I’m going to use.”

Police Chief Dan Coulombe said that although the department already measures and does well in many of the program’s gauges, he said the program has identified a few areas for improvement. Among them are tracking the assignment of cases and the number of non-911 calls the police station receives. The station has no method to track non-911 calls, he said.