City Health Score Methodology

1 What is the City Health Score?

Plain English.

The City Health Score is a composite 1–10 index that measures Santa Monica's civic condition across four equal pillars: public safety, fiscal management, economic vacancy, and tourism vitality. A higher number means the city is performing better.

Each pillar draws on objective, publicly available data — annual crime statistics, adopted budget figures, commercial and residential vacancy surveys, and visitor count data. The score is not a prediction. It's a snapshot of where the city stands right now, updated whenever new data is published.

A 15% modifier anchors the score to Santa Monica's standing relative to all 88 cities in Los Angeles County — so a moderate absolute score that ranks highly among peers will be nudged upward, and vice versa.

2 The 9 Inputs

Every metric that feeds the score, with its current value and data source.

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3 How Each Metric Is Scored

Every raw number is normalized to a 1–10 sub-score using a fixed range.

The normalization formula:

// For metrics where LOWER is better (crime, vacancy): sub_score = 10 − ((value − low_bound) / (high_bound − low_bound)) × 9 // For metrics where HIGHER is better (revenue, visitors): sub_score = 1 + ((value − low_bound) / (high_bound − low_bound)) × 9 // Result is always clamped to [1, 10]

A value at the low end of a "lower is better" metric scores 10. A value at the high end scores 1.

Metric	Direction	Low Bound	High Bound	Unit
Part 1 Crime Rate	lower = better	0	10,000	per 100K residents
Part 2 Crime Rate	lower = better	0	8,000	per 100K residents
Budget Revenue	higher = better	$200M	$1.2B	USD
Budget Surplus %	higher = better	−30%	+10%	% of expenditure
Office Vacancy	lower = better	0%	50%	% of stock
Retail Vacancy	lower = better	0%	40%	% of stock
Residential Vacancy	lower = better	0%	20%	% of stock
Tourism Visitors	higher = better	1M	5M	millions/year
LA County Rank	lower rank = better	Rank 88	Rank 1	among 88 cities

4 Category Weights

Four equal pillars make up 85% of the score. LA County rank is the 15% modifier.

🔴 Crime

Crime avg × 25%

21.25%

🟡 Budget

Budget avg × 25%

21.25%

🔵 Vacancy

Vacancy avg × 25%

21.25%

🟢 Tourism

Tourism × 25%

21.25%

🏆 LA County Rank

Modifier

15%

// Base score (85%): average of four category scores category_avg = avg(crime_score, budget_score, vacancy_score, tourism_score) // Final score overall_score = round(category_avg × 0.85 + la_county_rank_score × 0.15, 1)

5 Trend Momentum Factor

Year-over-year direction matters — a worsening metric is penalized even if the absolute value is still moderate.

📈

Improving

YoY change > +2% in the right direction
+1.0 added to the base sub-score

➡️

Stable

YoY change within ±2%
No adjustment — score reflects absolute value only

📉

Worsening

YoY change > +2% in the wrong direction
−1.0 subtracted from the base sub-score

Formula:

// Threshold: 2% YoY movement required to register a trend pct_change = (current − prior) / |prior| if lowerIsBetter: pct_change < −0.02 → direction = "improving", adjustment = +1.0 pct_change > +0.02 → direction = "worsening", adjustment = −1.0 else: (higherIsBetter) pct_change > +0.02 → direction = "improving", adjustment = +1.0 pct_change < −0.02 → direction = "worsening", adjustment = −1.0 // Adjusted score is clamped to [1, 10] adjusted_score = clamp(base_score + adjustment, 1, 10)