Survey Says Roads Still A Sore Spot with Local Taxpayers
By 250 News
Monday, December 13, 2010 08:21 PM
Prince George, B.C.- The annual survey on how residents of Prince George feel about municipal services and spending, and their own quality of life has been completed.
The survey results are used as input in the budget development process, but with just 363 responses out of 4500, the response rate was less than 8%, slightly lower than last year. Dr.Shannon Wagner of the Institute of Social Research and Evaluation says she thinks people are "surveyed out" and are suffering a certain amount of "survey fatigue". There was also a concern that some computers block out surveys.
While there were respondents, she says she is happy the demographics have moved into a 50-50 split of male, female responders, and they covered a broader range of education and income.
Here are some of the highlights:
The services people are most satisfied with are:
1. Fire protection 83% (fifth straight time this has ranked #1)
2. Arenas 76%
3. Library 75% (was in second spot last year)
4. Water supply 74%
5. Aquatic Centre 72%
The services people are least satisfied with:
1. Road and Street maintenance 73% ( fifth straight time this has ranked as the service with the greatest amount of dissatisfaction.)
2. Land Use Planning 43%
3. Weed and Dust Control tied at 38%
4. Snow Control 37% ( this is the first time it has ranked in the top five)
5. Economic Initiatives 35%
Note: each service is ranked on its own out of 100% so that is why the total of each top 5 will not add up to 100%.
Respondents were also asked to rank how they would like their tax dollars spent on city services, and 91% said police services was their number one priority, while, the lowest priority was given to parking control with 46% saying that was a non priority for them.
A large majority of respondents do not want increased taxes for big projects (83%) . Most respondents want the city to find external monies to fund big projects (92%) "There is no appeitite for increased taxes," Dr. Wagner told Council. She said the survey shows most prefer to see an increase in user fees.
As for the distribution of tax dollars, respondents would like to see those dollars shifted away from general government by 2.84%, and a reduction in recreation and cultural allotments of 1.64%. The respondents also called for budgets to be shifted to realize an increased allotment of 2.51% on roads and 1.75% more on transit.
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Posted by: sjm on December 13 2010 8:51 PM
I'm not sure how statistically accurate this might be, although the results are interesting. Perhaps if council is SO concerned about what people think they might re-visit how they conduct their surveys. As mentioned in the story, people are obviously survey fatigued... too bad really because it's obvious to me (former PG resident now happily living in Calgary... because it sucks WAY less than PG) that council and city staff do care what people think, and would likely act on any general trend in the population... if they could get a real survey result.
Best of luck on that!!