You may recall previous discussions about the challenges the Sheriff’s Office has had in filling vacant detention officer positions. This prompted the Sheriff’s Office to implement several new recruiting strategies, including offering existing employee financial incentives for making hiring referrals.

 

The Sheriff’s Office Training Academy has identified 18 recruits in Class 706 scheduled to graduate January 10. Class 707, the newest recruitment class, began on December 17 with 42 recruits. An additional 8 recruits have been processed and ready for hire on January 2. I am pleased to report that the net effect will be trimming detention officer vacancies to 29, which is the fewest number of vacancies in recent years.

 

 

The County’s 2007 Performance Report has been published and was distributed in the December 14 edition of The Business Journal. The performance report is developed each year to communicate the County’s balanced scorecard results to the community.
 
Mecklenburg residents are provided an opportunity to see the progress being made in achieving the Board’s 2015 vision of being “a community of pride and choice for people to live, work and recreate.”

 

The Performance Report reveals that we have achieved green light performance on 47% of the 33 performance results reported. This includes sustaining green lights on 11 measures and improved performance resulting in an additional three green lights from last year. In addition, 25% of the measures with red or yellow light indicate a positive trend of improved performance from the previous year.
 
The most notable gains are found in the Effective & Efficient Government Focus Area and the Growth Management & Environment Focus Area, including:

 

The Performance Report also identifies those areas where performance is lagging. These data lead to changes in strategy to improve performance. For example, in the Community Health & Safety Focus Area, we have developed the Community Mental Health & Justice service to impact the time inmates remain in jail awaiting trial, as well as the measure for mental health in our community.
 
In the Social, Education & Economic Opportunity Focus Area, we formed a Literacy Collaborative comprising representatives from CMS, CPCC, Communities in Schools and the Public Library. The purpose of the group is to develop community strategies to increase literacy throughout the county.
 
An electronic copy of the Performance Report is available online at www.MecklenburgCountyNC.Gov under the Mecklenburg County Spotlight section. Copies also have been placed in each Board member’s mailbox. For additional information, please contact Leslie Johnson, Planning & Evaluation Director, at (704) 432-0090 or Leslie.Johnson@MecklenburgCountyNC.gov.