Hello, friends. Nice to see ya. How’s it going?
Friendliness and neighborliness are what make Southwest Washington great. More than anything else, that friendly feeling is what residents love about calling this place home.
That’s what 29 percent of respondents told marketing firm DHM Research, which conducted a scientific telephone survey of 673 people in Clark, Cowlitz and Skamania counties for the Community Foundation of Southwest Washington during the spring and summer. The Community Foundation has released an overview of the survey, with more data to come next year.
o “500,000 voices”
o Community Foundation for Southwest Washington
“One of the things I love about Vancouver is the tight community feel. There’s a sense of community here that I don’t think you find that much in other places,” said Michele McKeag Larsen, who was drawn back to Vancouver from Beaverton, Ore., by that sense of community when pregnant with her first child. Larsen went on to launch a nonprofit called The Joy Team, which spreads encouragement, optimism and inspiration through community billboards, sidewalk artworks and other cheery outreach — like notes and gifts from local children to police, sanitation workers and other hardworking public servants.
“I do think it’s a very friendly community, and I think the Joy Team really adds to the warmth,” Larsen said. “We are happy and thrilled to be part of that.”
“No matter where I go in Vancouver, I always notice that people tend to make eye contact,” said Kelly Love Parker, CEO of the Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce. “They tend to smile. They might say something about the weather. That may seem trivial, but it is one person’s way of wanting to connect. There is a sense of connectivity in our community.”
“You can’t always strike up a conversation in the grocery store or admire other people’s children the way you can in Vancouver,” Parker said.
But aside from the friendliness piece, the survey didn’t find a lot of congenial consensus on anything. When folks were asked for the No. 1 issue that local government needs to take on, “don’t know” was the top vote-getter at 13 percent. After that, 12 percent of respondents chose jobs and the economy as the top government challenge, while 10 percent chose road infrastructure. Eight percent each chose government taxation/spending and crime/public safety. Government leadership/corruption and drug abuse got 5 percent each. Homelessness and poverty, education, health care and even traffic congestion were all down in the 3 and 4 percent range.
That’s where the survey details will add further illumination, Community Foundation officials say. They’re planning to release a far more detailed version of the survey in January, once the holiday season is over. What’s available right now on the website http://www.500kvoices.org is a general overview. The Community Foundation also will add the additional opinions, comments and other data that were generated by its own outreach efforts earlier this year.
The whole project is called “500,000 voices,” but that’s more an expression of the Community Foundation’s ambition to make sure everyone in the Southwest Washington area is heard as the community moves forward. It’s possible that more data will be collected in the future, officials have said. Meanwhile, the actual participation at this stage was 673 completed telephone interviews with DHM Research, plus 1,364 more surveys completed online. This initial report only contains data from the 673 surveys.
The Community Foundation is looking forward to launching a series of community conversations about the findings in 2015, executive director Jennifer Rhoads said. Plans are still shaping up, but survey partners including Washington State University Vancouver and Oregon Public Broadcasting may play roles in hosting such events, she said.
Other survey collaborators or supporters included the Northwest Health Foundation and the United Way of Columbia-Willamette; marketing firm AHA!; Clark College; and The Columbian.
Pro-environment, education
Second to friendly neighborliness, a sense of public safety was what people said they like most about living in Southwest Washington, with 14 percent saying so; beautiful scenery and a rural, small-town feel both earned 12 percent. All of which points to a satisfaction with quality of life and the quality of the natural environment in Southwest Washington.
More than half of respondents — 53 percent — said they favor “protecting Southwest Washington’s environmental quality,” and 52 percent said they “favor prioritizing environmental issues over economic growth in the next 10 years.” Forty-three percent said they’re opposed to “revamping land use laws to permit more development in green spaces.”
Concern about the environment extends all the way to a belief for over just half of respondents — 51 percent — that climate change will require us to simplify our way of life and, for example, drive individual cars less. Forty-nine percent believe we’ve got to consume less, while 44 percent said our purchasing power is an “economic driver.” Forty percent of respondents said they’d rather “deal with it later” if climate change becomes a problem.
Diversity of opinion when it comes to growth and infrastructure was unmistakable. Just under half — 49 percent — support “elevating” our local economic role in the state and across the nation, while the exact same percentage — 49 percent — supports investing more tax revenues in public transit instead of “more roads for cars.”
Education and job training were areas of strong consensus. Eighty percent supported reducing the cost of college tuition. Seventy-three percent support “increasing workforce training,” and 70 percent called workforce development and on-the-job training for low-income people the area’s top economic development priority.
“That surprised me,” Rhoads said. “For that to be dramatically on top was a bit of an ‘aha’ for me and for our board. When you look at the programs we support, it’s not around workforce development. We’ll be taking a hard look at that when our next granting cycle opens up.”
Sixty-nine percent like the idea of devoting tax dollars to expanding school funding and broadening the curriculum; and 56 percent support prekindergarten that gets all young children ready for elementary school.
“We sure were glad to see the overall emphasis on education,” Rhoads said.
In terms of health, a strong majority — 68 percent — agreed with the idea of insurers creating financial incentives for healthy behaviors and discouragement for unhealthy behaviors.
Finally, 75 percent of Southwest Washingtonians support finding common ground on critical issues and 77 percent are optimistic about their own personal futures over the next five years.
