At our strategic planning retreat in October 2013, Commissioner Angela Markley and I presented a countywide citizen survey as part of our suggested revisions to the UG's budget adoption calendar. The Mayor and the other Commissioners were unanimous in their agreement that it would be valuable for us to complete a survey, so we directed staff to "make it so".
The Unified Government contracted with ETC Institute of Olathe, Kansas to conduct the survey. ETC has a great reputation for conducting quality community surveys and they have surveyed citizens in over 300 cities across 46 states since 1998.
The survey was distributed by mail in February 2014 to a stratified random sample of households in Wyandotte County. A total of 1, 249 surveys were returned. ETC made sure that at least 150 surveys were received from each of the eight Commission districts. After tabulating the results, ETC is confident that the results of the survey represent the residents of the county both geographically and demographically.
ETC also told us that the margin of error is statistically very small and that the survey results give us a very good indication of what the citizens of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas are thinking as a group.
Summary Results
Here is a link to the PowerPoint summary report that was presented as part of our strategic planning session
I've pulled a few slides from the summary presentation of March 8 and included them here. I encourage you to click on the link above and the others listed below for a review of the entire survey and results.
The gentleman who presented the summary report to us in our strategic planning session summed up the overall results by saying, "You're doing better, but you have a ways to go".
Here's the summary slide he presented. (You can click on any of the slides below to display them larger so that you can read the small printing).
For example, under the heading of "You're doing better", here is a graph that shows overall satisfaction with services provided by the city of Kansas City Kansas. The lighter bars indicate responses gathered in the 2000 survey while the darker bars indicate the responses gathered in the 2014 survey. Regardless of the service provided, more people gave higher ratings in 2014 than in 2000.
Here are the positive ratings for overall quality of life and overall image of Kansas City, Kansas in 2014. Once again, more people responded favorably to quality-of-life and image in 2014 than in 2000.
So far so good, but here's where there is a tremendous advantage to having a company like ETC conduct our survey and compile the results. Since they conduct similar surveys in hundreds of other cities across the United States, we have the opportunity to compare ourselves to other cities of similar size.
When we do that, we understand that we still have "A ways to go".
In the two graphs below, the dark blue bars indicate the responses in the UG 2014 survey, while the red bars indicate the responses for all citizens surveyed in the Kansas City metro area and the yellow bars indicate the average responses for all cities surveyed across the United States.
We want our positive ratings to meet or exceed those of citizens in other cities, so we know we have work to do.
Lots of questions on the survey asked citizens to prioritize the areas where they think we should focus our attention and resources.
The next two graphs show the number of people who selected particular items as their first, second or third choice for us to focus on improving.
You'll see that the top three overall priorities for city services are "Quality of maintenance of city streets", "Quality of city police services", and "Quality of city code enforcement".
In terms of county services, the top three overall priorities are "Quality of motor vehicle registration", "Quality of aging services", "Quality of parks".
Detailed Results
There is much more detailed information about the survey on the Unified Government website if you'd like to go take a look.
Here are three links that will give you access to the very detailed final report along with maps and charts of responses by Commission Districts.
- Final Report (much more detailed than the PowerPoint linked above)
- Appendix A - Maps of responses by Commission District
- Appendix B - Numerical charts of responses by Commission District
Where Do We Go From Here?
Our challenge now is to actually figure out how to capitalize on the strengths and improve the weaknesses identified in the survey. This will require effort and resources and a commitment from every one of us to get the job done. I believe we can do it and I look forward to the work!
Have a great week!
~ Brian
bmckiernan@wycokck.org
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