MISSOULA — Missoula Mayor Andrea Davis recently attended the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, a summit of mayors from all over the world who gather to discuss issues they are facing.
The event — which featured 38 mayors from different continents — came at no cost to the taxpayers was funded by the initiative itself.
Mayors from around the world discussed the common issues that they face such as homelessness and the unhoused, substance abuse and affordable housing.
When asked what solutions Davis would like to implement for Missoula, she said making decisions based on real statistics instead of emotion was the major takeaway.
“Data-informed decisions are not like data, only decisions — but they're informed decisions. And a lot of times in government, you're making decisions based on anecdotal, you're making decisions based on previous decisions which can be OK...to base decisions on previous," Davis explained. "But you're basing it on previous decisions and you're basing it sometimes on emotion...constituents preferences and things of that nature. And all those things are valid still, but at the end of the day, it's like...what does the data tell you about something."
But what comes with data-driven decisions is time, something which Davis acknowledged could slow down decision-making.
“I think it could be one of those things where we have to slow down to speed up. Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a really legitimate point” said Davis.
Overall the mayor hopes to implement data-driven solutions in the community even if that sometimes takes a little more time.
