Coeds win award for Burnet strategic planning project

BURNET – A research project for city growth that earned three Tarleton State University-Central Texas coeds an award could be part of a blueprint for Burnet’s future, officials said. 

The trio participated in a strategic planning research project that earned them a second-place award from the Texas A&M Sixth Annual Pathways Student Research Symposium held Nov. 7-8 at Texas A&M University in Commerce. 

Laura Bruneau, Amber Parris and Keri McGregor conducted telephone surveys of up to 200 Burnet households to poll residents about the city and municipal services.

“The goal of the project is to develop a strategic plan for the City Council and staff to follow to improve city services,” Economic Development Director Crista Bromley said.

The three competed in a business undergraduate category with their project “A Statistical Model of the Predictors of Performance Excellence in City Management” under the direction of  Tarleton State University-Central Texas assistant professor Dr. Laura Matherly and Maureen Jouett, an adjunct professor of management, marketing and administrative systems.

The project went up against nine Texas A&M University System Institutions involving undergraduate, masters and doctoral students with awards going to the top presentations in each category.

The project was a joint effort between Burnet and Tarleton using a research model that began in early 2007. The students conducted the phone surveys in Burnet from September to December 2007.

“I think the main goal of the project is to find out what’s important to the community of Burnet,” Assistant City Manager David Vaughn said. “This allows the city to improve services and make sure we’re working toward our goals. The students also seemed to get quite a bit out of it by doing something with some meaning and to have the ability to contribute to the city.”

He added: “Most cities don’t do this, but they should. It’s something each city should do to know which direction the community is taking. It’s nice to hear citizen input, and that should be our goal. We are really here to serve the residents.”

Vaughn said this is the first time Burnet has participated in such a project and he hopes to see this become an annual survey.

“This is basically being conducted in two segments,” Vaughn said. The 200 calls were made from the students in a previous semester, and there will be another 100 phone calls made by a second group. When you’re dealing with a sample size of this amount, it’s a great sampling for a city of this size,” Vaughn said.

The questions were approved by a number of people from Texas A&M to city officials. The individuals who were called upon were chosen at random and Vaughn says the different groups who were polled provided different results.

“The group is basically going to devise a mission and vision statement for each city department, and then they will use the data to create a scorecard for the city,” City Manager Mike Steele said. “The vision statement will help us see if our goals were met, the mission statement will show us what we’re doing now and the scorecard tells us how to get there. We wanted to improve each department in terms of their quality and timeliness of service. The overall goal is to provide a better quality of life for our residents.”

Vaughn said the first results of raw data are expected to be presented to the city by next week and should be viewable on the city Web site in January.

The students, meanwhile, will be recognized Dec. 4 at an award’s reception at Tarleton-Central Texas.

byoung@thepicayune.com

Courtesy photo