St. Joseph to launch new resident surveys on key services
ST. JOSEPH, Mo. (News-Press NOW) — Thousands of local residents will see a wide-ranging community survey distributed in the coming weeks, a tool seen as critical to identify strengths and weaknesses with the city’s core services.
The survey, which takes roughly 15 minutes to fill out, will be made available online and randomly mailed to approximately 3,000 to 4,000 homes in the coming weeks.
“How are we taking care of our day-to-day business? And it really is our core business, whether it’s streets, police, fire, code enforcement, the city manager’s office,” City Manager Mike Schumacher said. “Whatever the function is ... there’s a question in there asking about how those services are.”
The survey will be equally distributed throughout all areas of town, and will be set up to allow respondents to both rate services and provide written responses anonymously.
Schumacher called it one of most important tools the city will use to not only evaluate customer experiences, but identify where to focus their efforts moving forward, allowing them to create a long-term game plan for the organization and the community.
“It helps hold the organization accountable. It helps lay out funding strategies and means going forward, where should we invest money? Where should Council look at? ‘Hey, this is an area where our customers are not happy. What are we going to do about it?’” he said.
The city has contracted with ETC Institute, an Olathe-based research firm, to develop the statistically valid survey. ETC Institute has developed surveys for a number of non-profit organizations, companies and city governments, including Overland Park, Blue Springs and Columbia.
Schumacher said the hope is to have a solid set of survey data to help steer conversations and budget preparations for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1.
“If street repair is very high on the list of what our customers want to see us focus on, then we know when it comes to funding, we need to have a conversation about streets as an example,” he said.
A work session was held in late February at City Hall to unveil the survey and allow input from city staff and councilmembers prior to its launch.
City officials are looking to conduct similar surveys at least once every two years to allow for up-to-date feedback and to track the progress of improvements in previously identified areas.
“By the time the survey is completed and we get that information back and we come up with a plan to address pain points or issues that we can improve upon, it’ll take some time to get those implemented and then for people to experience them,” he said.
