The results of Edmonds Mayor Mike Cooper’s online customer satisfaction survey can now be found on the City of Edmonds website. A total of 212 people responded. The link to the report is here.
Among the questions: How do you feel about the overall direction the city is headed, on a scale of 1-5 (5 strongly agree headed in right direction.) Nearly 34 percent chose 3, 26 percent chose 4 and 6 percent selected 5. The survey also explored how satisfied respondents were specific areas of government, from parks maintenance to public safety to the city’s flower program.
In addition, the survey asked “how the city should be spending your money?” Among the top priorities: emergency police response, economic development, and street and utility maintenance.
As to whether the city should reduce programs or “have additional revenue” to ensure budget sustainability by the end of 2011, a majority of respondents favored “new voter approved revenue,” followed closely by “a combination of new revenue and reductions.” The most popular revenue generator was an increased property tax, followed by increased vehicle license fees.
The biggest surprise in the survey results for me, was how many people started, but didn’t finish the survey!
The layout of the results is also quite informative – just from the shape of the response curves, you can tell how strong the opinions are, whether everyone pushed “3”, or divided into camps of “1” and “5”.
For the bottom line – what do we do about our budget vs. tax revenue issue – this survey will be very informative in helping to shape the debate.
Although tempting to draw conclusions as it may be…this a very small self selecting sample. Interesting as it may be, the sample isn’t random and as such cannot be relied upon as though it were a random poll.