Sandy City uses two different surveys to measure residents’ satisfaction

Every year, Sandy City measures residents’ responses to different aspects of how the city provides services through a citizen survey. The information is often used to address problems or concerns residents may have.

This year, in place of the usual Dan Jones Citizen Survey the city has done for 13 of the last 16 years, the city opted to do two smaller surveys instead.

A communications survey was done last fall to gauge how residents felt about how the city communicated with them. The city is also conducting a survey in February about the trails system.

“We were busy with other projects and we didn’t have any pressing issues to address in the citizen survey this year,” Assistant Chief Administrative Officer Korban Lee said. “We’ve heard from other surveys that trails are one of the most important things to our residents. We decided to do a survey to get an idea if that is true and what type of trails they want. Because of the trails survey this year and the communications survey last year, we felt like that would take the place of the citizen survey this year.”

The trails survey will ask residents their thoughts on the current trail system and about improvements they would like to see. It will also ask howthey feel about implementing a trails fee to help maintain current trails and build new ones. Lee said residents will be picked randomly to participate in the survey

The communications survey had 651 responses with 256 solicited over the phone, 247 by e-mail and 147by mail. Communications Director Trina Duerksen said this was the first time the city had done a survey dealing exclusively with how the city communicates with residents. The cost of this survey was about $2,700.

The majority of residents were satisfied with how the city communicates and on a scale of 1 to 5, one being poor and 5 being excellent, 11 percent gave the city a five, 39 percent gave the city a four while 41 percent gave the city a three. Only 5 percent of those surveyed said they were extremely dissatisfied with how the city communicates.

Duerksen said most of the results were what city officials expected. The survey asked residents if they had visited the city website and what information they were looking for. About 59 percent of residents said they had been on the website. Just 13 percent of those polled said they had visited the website from a mobile device such as an iPhone or Android mobile phone, iPod touch, iPad, or tablet computer.

“We didn’t really know what to expect from the social media questions,” Deurksen said. “We had an idea of what the responses would be, but this survey confirmed how residents feel for sure.”

When asked about receiving updates from the city through its Twitter account, 65 percent said they would not like to receive Twitter updates. However, households with children under 18 responded more favorably to Twitter updates with 43 percent being in favor.

Although the city is not making any major changes with how it communicates with residents based on survey results, city officials have decided to start a Facebook page sometime this spring, Duerksen said. The city is in the process of hiring an intern to manage the Facebook page and respond to comments.

“We had an idea of what the results would be and this survey confirmed it,” she said. “It’s not something we will do again every year but maybe in a few years to take into account changes in social media.”