The City of Blue Springs conducts a citizen satisfaction survey, usually once a year, as a tool for the Mayor, city council, and city staff to evaluate how the citizens view a variety of city services, programs, plans and progress. The survey covers issues such as police visibility, road and sidewalk maintenance, parks and recreation, and leadership within our city government.
For the past 5 years, I have taken an in-depth look at our citizen surveys. Citizen responses began to improve in some areas in 2007, and the 2009 and 2010 surveys show that our citizens are generally pleased with the significant progress our city has made in targeting those issues that are important to us.
The benchmarking section of the survey compares our opinions of our city to the opinions other metropolitan citizens have of their own city. There have been substantial improvements in how we view our police services, customer service at city hall, and our city’s effectiveness in communication with the public. Significant opportunity for improvement still exists on street maintenance and enforcement of building and property maintenance, although the new property maintenance codes have contributed to improvements in this area.
Many sections improved by 10% or more in this year’s survey. New bike lanes and trails, information about city programs and services and local issues, management of traffic flow and congestion, maintenance of streets, and management of our city’s growth all received high marks. Even more exciting was that NONE of the areas surveyed declined by 10% or more.
My favorite section of the survey is the GIS section. This section shows the distribution of opinions across the city and provides a window into specific areas of the city that may require more attention in specific instances.
An example would be the issue of “Satisfaction of Maintenance of City Streets and Sidewalks”. The vast majority of our residents are neutral on this topic meaning there is still much room for improvement. Yet one subdivision on AA Hwy stands out in the report as being dissatisfied. This should be a red flag for our city staff to evaluate, as there may be something in the area that requires attention.
Overall, this year’s survey shows significant improvements in almost all areas. Regardless, there remains much to do to keep our city the best place to live, work and play in this great state. Our city council is doing a good job of listening to our citizens and responding with solutions. I am looking forward to the opportunity to serve the citizens of District 1 once again, should they honor me with a majority vote in April. More information is available at www.JeffreyQuibell.com.
To view the current citizen survey go to http://bit.ly/bssurvey2010