Community survey offers mixed bag

Identifying community priorities key to budget-writing process

A 402-person phone survey isn’t the only way city officials are looking for help to shape the future — they’re hoping to get as many people involved as possible.

The city is in the midst of what it calls Horizons, a process for prioritizing city programs and services (and how to pay for them), based on community input, said Eric Holmes, economic development director.

The feedback will be given to the City Council and city manager as they write a 2012 budget that’s sure to be at least $10 million smaller than this year’s, which has seen 44 layoffs and cuts to services across the board. More than $35 million has been cut from the $181 million general fund in the last decade as revenue growth continues to fall short of expense growth.

At this point it’s clear that there is going to have to be some serious restructuring, and Horizons will help the city figure where to lay the new foundations, Holmes said.

“We need to really look at what priorities are for Vancouver,” said Holmes, who will become the assistant city manager at the end of the year. “We need to know what people value most, and the price they’re willing to pay.”

All the work for Horizons is being done with city resources and staff, and other than $800 for some new polling technology and the cost of refreshments at meetings, no extra general fund money is being spent, Holmes said. The phone survey, which is conducted every two years, cost $12,500.

In 2008, the city council identified six areas of strategic importance: A healthy, livable and sustainable Vancouver; a safe and prepared community; transportation mobility and connectivity; financial health and economic vitality; accountable, responsive city government; and an active, involved community.

Horizons looks to find out which areas are most important to residents. Each of the city’s 300-plus programs and services have been categorized under one of the six areas.

Horizons helps the council set policy direction. The job of deciding whether to cut specific services, like parks maintenance or fire rescue units, will still fall to City Manager Pat McDonnell, Holmes said.

“We’re not at that level of detail — it truly is, ‘Do you think a safe and prepared community is the top priority, or is it an active, involved community?’ ” he said.

To reach a wide demographic for the Horizons process, Holmes said the city will include these steps:

o An online version of the Community Survey will be posted on the city’s website, http://www.cityofvancouver.us, through the end of the month.

o A public meeting will be at 7 p.m. May 11 at the Water Resources Education Center.

o Focus groups of 10 to 15 randomly selected members of the community are being held right now. Participants are called and asked to attend small-group meetings and offer their ideas.

o A large-group meeting with invited key community stakeholders, including nonprofit groups, business leaders, faith-based groups and others, will be held May 8.

o The city’s Business Leadership Advisory Team continues to weigh in during regular meetings.

The city council is continuing budget retreats through the end of May; the city manager will present his final budget in the fall.

— Andrea Damewood

Less than half of Vancouver’s residents are satisfied with the direction the city is heading. People feel a lot safer driving in their cars than they did eight years ago, but they are more scared about walking around their neighborhoods after dark.

Many think that voter approved taxes or levies are the best way to solve the city’s budget woes, but they don’t personally want to pay any taxes to improve key areas — even though just over half said they are happy with the value of city services for their tax dollar.

The 2010 Community Status and Financial Options Survey, a scientifically valid phone poll of randomly-selected community members, was presented to the Vancouver City Council Monday night as a mixed-bag snapshot of opinions and perceptions.

“People recognize that some new revenue is a part of the solution,” Vancouver Performance Analyst Tom Nosack said. “But right now is not a good time to do anything.”

Reflecting the country’s economic crisis — which has seen cities of every size struggle to stay solvent and unemployment rates skyrocket — both jobs and the city’s budget made people’s list of top challenges for the first time, Nosack said.

The economy probably also colored the fact that just 48 percent of Vancouver residents polled said they were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the direction the city is heading, he said. (But 76 percent also said they were at least satisfied or better with their quality of life in Vancouver.)

“I’m told we shouldn’t expect to see that improve until there is a clear sign the economy is improving in our area,” Nosack said.

Nosack also broke down numerous city services, from emergency response to adult recreation programs, to ask citizens how happy they were with the level of service and also how important they think that service is.

People had a general satisfaction with many parks and recreation programs, but also ranked them at lower priority, meaning the city has a “possible imbalance of resources,” Nosack said.

Other programs, including job creation, efforts to improve government efficiency, maintenance of major city streets and the police department’s investigation of crimes and enforcement of traffic regulations, were all found to be of high priority to citizens, but with low marks for satisfaction.

That, Nosack said, also indicates a possible resource imbalance in the opposite direction.

Also striking was the information that while people have seen things like street and parks maintenance decline, people are indicating they are all right with that being the status quo for now, Nosack said. Satisfaction in those areas is “much lower than 2008 levels, but they seem to be OK with that,” he said.

The Community Survey is held every two years to give the city council a look into trends. This year, the city paid an outside contracting group about $12,500 for the study, which was conducted in late February. An online version is on the city’s website, http://www.cityofvancouver.us, and more than 800 residents have completed the survey there.

The survey results will join focus group and large group meeting information as part of the city’s Horizons process, in which council members will try to identify which areas are the most important to the community as they and the city manager cut up to $12 million from the 2011 budget.

The Web survey results turned out to be similar to the scientific survey, except that responders there tend to express more overall dissatisfaction and have a bit more pessimistic attitude, Nosack said. Their prioritization of services and desire to pay for things, however, is on par with the phone poll, he said.

Poll takers overwhelmingly gave their support to the value of the city’s services for their tax dollars (51 percent were satisfied or very satisfied), and the quality of the city’s services (67 percent gave favorable ratings). In a similar poll conducted throughout the Northwest, people gave those marks favorable ratings of 34 percent and 55 percent, respectively.

Not surprisingly, a vast majority of the residents said they were both happy with police 911 response (75 percent), and also not willing at all to accept cuts in police and fire rescue.

“There’s a lot of good information in this survey,” Mayor Tim Leavitt said. “The higher importance, lower satisfaction areas identify for us where we need to be thinking outside the box … on how we can raise satisfaction there.”

Have your say

Vancouver is gathering community input as part of Horizons, the city’s way of prioritizing and refocusing programs and services based on the community’s values.

o Community meeting: A public meeting will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 11, at the Water Resources Education Center, 4600 S.E. Columbia Way.

o At home: The meeting will air live on CVTV Channel 23. Combining polling technology with CVTV coverage, those watching from home can also participate using a Web-based cell phone or computer at http://www.cvtv.org.

o RSVP: To attend the public meeting, e-mail events@ci.vancouver.wa.us or call 360-487-8611. By reserving a spot, the meeting planners will know how many polling devices they will need.

Most Vancouver residents satisfied

402 residents completed the city’s 2010 Community Status and Financial Options Survey. The full survey results are available at http://www.cityofvancouver.us. Here’s what they said:

o 76 percent of respondents were very satisfied or satisfied with overall quality of life (down from 82 percent in 2008).

o 67 percent of respondents were very satisfied or satisfied with quality of services provided by city (up from 54 percent in 2008).

o 51 percent of respondents were very satisfied or satisfied with the value of taxes and fees (the same as in 2008).

o 48 percent of respondents who were very satisfied or satisfied with the direction the city is heading (down from 53 percent in 2007).

Most important challenges facing the city today

Percentage of respondents who ranked the following among their top three:

o Transportation: 34 percent.

o Jobs: 14 percent.

o City budget: 11 percent.

o Public safety: 10 percent.

o Other: 31 percent.

On the lighter side

Here are a few other questions that came up in the 2010 Community Survey:

o 47 percent of respondents said they live east of Interstate 205; 4 percent said they did not know what part of Vancouver they lived in.

o Residents volunteer an average of 13.4 hours a year.

o 27 percent visited downtown more than 51 times last year.

o 72 percent said they work in Washington; 22 percent said they commute to Oregon. Only 1 percent admitted they were unemployed. 14 percent of those taking the survey on the Web said they were out of work.

On the Web

o For a copy of the results, visit the city of Vancouver’s website, http://www.cityofvancouver.us, and click on “2010 Community Survey Results Available.”

o What’s your opinion? Check out our poll at http://www.columbian.com.