Covington residents told surveyors in May they want more entertainment as well as recreation and they believe the police department is the most essential city service, among other things.
From May 14-26 Elway Research conducted phone interviews, explained Karla Slate, the city’s community relations coordinator. In addition, thanks to a grant, Elway sent out invitations in the mail to participate in a web survey. Phone interviews were conducted with residents who listed a phone number on their voter registration.
A majority of the questions were similar to those asked in the city’s last survey conducted in 2009, Slate said, to measure how Covington was performing on those benchmarks according to residents.
“We had previously done surveys and it’s a best practice,” Slate said. “It allows us to see how our residents, our citizens view how we’re doing with their tax payer dollars.”
With the results in hand at the end of May, Slate said, staff presented the report Elway Research prepared to the City Council at the first meeting in June.
“What’s not too exciting about it is that pretty much all of our benchmarks that we had from 2009 to now were pretty much the same,” Slate said. “The public pretty much thinks we are doing the same job as we were doing in 2009 which is excellent given the budget and the economy that we’ve been able to maintain our levels of service. It was good to see that the results mirrored the 2009 results.”
With 75 percent of the questions the same as the survey done four years ago, the remaining questions focused on other topics such as parks and recreation as well as taxes. There were 448 respondents to the survey, according to the report prepared by Elway. Slate said it didn’t seem like the results surprised the members of the City Council but they seemed pleased with the number of participants as it was an increase over previous surveys.
“When you look at the demographics of the respondents they felt like it was a better representation of our citizens,” Slate said. “By doing the mixed method we were able to get a better cross section of our residents.”
Key findings, according to the report, were that nine out of 10 respondents believe Covington is safe and a good place to raise a family, that many pay attention to city government and that the majority would be willing to consider tax increases for eight of 10 city services listed including police officers, street improvements, and a pedestrian friendly town center being at the top of the list.
The survey provides useful information for the City Council and staff, Slate said. It could also prove helpful as the city plans to put a sale tax increase on the ballot in November to be managed via a transportation benefit district.
“I’ve been told by all of the department heads that they use this information when they’re setting their goals and meeting with their staff,” Slate said. “It’s a good tool for the departments to use. It gives us the proof we need to say if we need to do something to maintain or cut we know what is important to residents. We need to know, City Council doesn’t want to make assumptions.”
