The future of long-term care for seniors and affordable housing are among the top contenders for “the most important issue facing the District of Sechelt today,” according to the latest citizen satisfaction survey.
The draft results from the telephone portion of the survey were presented at the Dec. 14 finance, culture and economic development committee.
Greg Lyle of Innovative Research, which also conducted the 2012 and 2013 surveys, called the overall results “a pretty stable story.” He said while satisfaction was up in two categories, it was down in two others, and the big picture remains fairly positive in terms of how people view the work of district staff and council.
Long-term care hasn’t shown up in the survey before, but it ranked as the number two issue this year with 13 per cent of the respondents citing it as the most important issue for them.
Affordable housing went up from three and two per cent in the 2012 and 2013 surveys to 10 per cent in 2016.
The number one concern, however, remained unchanged: 22 per cent of the respondents ranked water/sewer as most important. It was the number one issue in 2013 as well, but only 12 per cent of the respondents that year had it as their most important issue.
Lyle shared some of the general comments the company heard on each issue where respondents thought Sechelt could be doing more. On water/sewer they included: “Water shortage, should increase availability of water.” “More water, every summer we are short of water, that is major problem. They are not planning for the populations.” “The water meter has to be removed. They need to focus on expanding the reservoir.”
Coun. Doug Wright was quick to point out that Sechelt is in a tricky position when it comes to tackling those top issues.
“While we play a part in those, they are not our sole responsibility. So the top three issues in our community – yes we play a part, but it’s a minor part, quite frankly. And [we get to number four] before we actually hit something that’s directly ours.”
That something is infrastructure. The percentage of respondents concerned about infrastructure has risen from two per cent in both of the earlier surveys to eight per cent in 2016.
Lyle noted one red flag in the answers people gave to the question on how satisfied people were with the service they received after contacting the District. He said while the “net satisfaction” rating remained good, there was a slight bump in the number of people who said they were very dissatisfied.
“One thing I would pay attention to is the increase in the number of people who say they are dissatisfied,” he told the committee. “Twenty-seven per cent dissatisfied with 16 per cent very dissatisfied is not something you really want in customer service.”
“Some of this may have been due to [staff] turnover,” said Lyle. “As people come and go, files drop sometimes, so it may have been just a unique set of circumstances that, as things stabilize, may get better.”
Lyle also drew the committee’s attention to the responses on the issue of how well Sechelt was doing at “managing, planning, and making decisions effectively,” where the number of people somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied outweighed those who said they were somewhat satisfied or very satisfied.
Some of the comments the surveyors heard on improving community planning, transparency, communication, and government issues were: “Things take too long to get through the processes required from proposal to decision to implementation, too many revisions, stalling, etc., then services that could be in place are not provided,” and, “A lot needs to be changed starting with the way our council and mayor do things.”
Lyle said the survey results also suggest that there wouldn’t be a lot of opposition to a tax increase, if council could show it’s for worthwhile projects. That assessment did, however, come with the advice, “Don’t get carried away with it.”
The question on taxation was changed slightly for this year’s survey. It asked people to say if they favoured increasing taxes to enhance or expand services, increasing taxes only enough to maintain current service levels, cutting services and maintaining current tax levels, or cutting services and reducing taxes. There was also a “don’t know” option. Twenty-eight per cent of respondents said they would support a tax increase to enhance or expand services, and 44 per cent said they would back increasing taxes enough to maintain current service levels.
The surveyors talked to 301 randomly selected residents of Sechelt who had both landline and mobile phones between Nov. 9 and 13. The results were weighted to reflect the age and gender breakdown of Sechelt residents over age 18, and population sizes across the four main geographic areas of the district.
The results are considered accurate to within plus or minus 5.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
There was also an online survey, and those results are still being tabulated.
The budget for the citizen satisfaction survey was $16,500.
