Citizen survey results reveal few, although some, surprises

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

Despite complaints from one Key West City Commissioner that the $17,000 citizens survey didn’t reveal any new information, other city officials say the results will help in the budget process this summer.

“Now we have a citizens survey that we need to review against the strategic plan to see if we hit any of those marks and whether we need to make any adjustments in budget planning,” said City Manager Jim Scholl.

Scholl and city commissioners heard a presentation of the survey results at a special meeting June 30. The first-ever scientific survey of how Key West residents rank the quality of life and city services here was sent to 1,200 residents, asking them to fill out a five-page questionnaire. A total of 367 people sent the survey back, a 34 percent response rate. Although Commissioner Billy Wardlow complained about the low number of completed surveys, saying city staff could have done as good a job without spending $17,000, Damema Mann from the National Research Center, which conducted the survey, disagreed.

“The typical range we see for this type of survey is between 25 and 40 percent so Key West was well within the norm and actually at the high end of the response rate,” she said.

Residents gave their highest approval ratings to Key West as a good place to visit, the abundance of opportunities to attend cultural and music activities, and the city’s openness and acceptance of different lifestyles. The lowest marks were given to available housing options, including affordable quality housing, public parking and the cost of living in Key West.

“Less than one in 10 residents gave’ excellent’ or ‘good’ ratings to those items,” Mann said about affordable housing, parking and the high cost of living. “Those were all lower than the national and custom benchmarks, as well.”

Neighborhood and downtown area safety received high marks. And 47 percent gave a “good” rating to the overall quality of city services. The highest rated municipal service was the fire department, followed by emergency medical services, drinking water and the police department.

The lowest rated city services were the amount of open space on this densely populated island, code enforcement, street repair, and land use, planning and zoning.

“Some of the lowest rated services had to do with housing in Key West,” Mann told commissioners. “Housing options and affordable, quality housing were rated as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ by less than one in 10 respondents.”

Affordable housing, and the lack thereof in Key West, came up repeatedly in the survey results as the area where residents were most concerned.

“Our calculations indicated that 60 percent of Key West residents are under housing cost stress, which is the highest level of housing cost stress we’ve seen in any of our other communities in our database,” Mann said.

“I’m not all that surprised at the ranking of the issues. We all knew affordable housing was a major crisis in the city,” said Commissioner Jimmy Weekley. “What surprised me is that they were willing to have their taxes increased if they knew it was going for affordable housing.”

Scholl said that is one of several pieces of information contained in the survey results that he will be taking into consideration as he continues preparing a draft budget for the 2015-2016 fiscal year, beginning on Oct. 1. Another piece of the fiscal puzzle revolves around street repair, which 90 percent of the respondents ranked as an important issue. Commissioner Teri Johnston pointed out that the Key West street repair budget essentially stays at the same level each year and perhaps that should change.

“Clearly this report says we need to move that up in the food chain,” she said, adding, “There are a whole lot of opportunities in [the survey results] that I see. I’m really glad we have this report right before we go into the 2015/16 budget cycle.”

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