Neighborhood preservation leads way in 2010 citizen survey

LAKEWOOD – The city’s residents treasure their neighborhoods and the small businesses that serve them, but are relatively unimpressed with what they get for their tax dollars and seem to be less than familiar with their elected officials, according to the 2010 Citizen Survey.

The survey, conducted by the National Research Center, is the sixth the firm has done is Lakewood since 2006. The continuing use of NRC provides continuity in questions and data, providing easier comparison of results from survey to survey, said Kit Lammers, interim director of the City Manager’s Office.

And for the first time, the survey ranks Lakewood with other cities around the country as well as how citizens’ opinions stack up with those from other Front Range communities,” said Erin Caldwell of NRC.

Also for the first time, the results are broken down by City Council Ward, allowing ward-to-ward comparison of the results, Lammers said. That change was prompted by Council members, who wanted more specific data from their constituents.

The strongest response, endorsed by 91 percent of survey participants, rated their overall quality of life as “good” or “very good”. Only 1 percent rated quality of life in Lakewood as “bad”. Those responses are reflected in the “Planning Issues” category, in which 88 percent of those surveyed said the City should preserve and revitalize neighborhoods.

Also in the planning issues section of the survey, 87 percent of participants said city planners should strengthen existing small businesses and work to attract more. Preserving historic and cultural resources (85 percent) and promoting transportation alternatives (83 percent) also were considered priorities for planning.

Most of the survey results stack up well when compared with the national and Front Range benchmarks.

“One of the reasons that NRC pioneered comparisons is that we observed that certain services are always rated higher than others,” Caldwell said. “We think the fair comparison is not city Code enforcement services with police services, but police services compared to ratings given by residents to police services in other locales.”

The 2010 survey respondents rated maintenance of the city’s parks, open space and trails higher than any other city-provided service with 88 percent giving it a “good” or “very good” rating. That is the second highest rating of any response in the survey.

On the low end of the “City Services” category, only 49 percent of respondents believe the city’s planning and land-use staff provides good or very good service. Code enforcement was rated good or very good by 50 percent of the respondents, the second lowest rating in the City Services category.

Of the 18 city services ranked in the survey, only 15 could be compared with the national benchmark. Of those, 12 were above the national benchmark and two – police and city courts – were “similar” to the national standard. The only city service ranked below the national benchmark was the city’s newsletter, Looking at Lakewood.

And about half of those responding said they had contacted city employees or elected officials. The 76 percent satisfaction rate reported by those survey participants falls below both the national and Front Range comparisons.

In the “Public Trust” category, four items – the city’s direction, the quality of work by city employees, transparency and promoting citizen involvement – rated above the national benchmark. None rated below the national standard and only one – receiving “good” value for taxes paid – fell below the Front Range standard.

That response and three others – confidence in the City Manager’s Office and representation by the mayor and City Council -were rated positively by fewer than half of the respondents. Benchmark comparisons were not available for those issues.

But perhaps the most surprising result came in the number of respondents who know who the mayor and their Council representative are.

Less than half (44 percent) knew Bob Murphy is the city’s mayor. Five percent thought Denver leader John Hickenlooper is Lakewood’s mayor, 10 percent thought a former mayor still is in office and 44 percent flat-out admitted they just don’t know who the mayor is.

“The ‘what’ is important as opposed to the ‘who’,” Murphy said. “The what is that people are happy living in Lakewood and there’s a consistent upward trend in satisfaction with our city employees”

Ward 1’s Vicki Stack was the most-recognized Council member: 45 percent of respondents knew her name. Cindy Baroway, who represents Ward 2, was known to only 20 percent of respondents, the fewest of any Council member.

NRC mailed out 3,000 initial surveys, 600 in each of the city’s five wards. About 6 percent were returned as undeliverable and 32 percent of the remaining 2,832 surveys, 897, were completed.

The survey has a margin of error of +/- 3 percent.

The complete survey can be perused via the city’s web site.