Buffalo Grove survey points to need for volunteers, diversity

The need for more diversity on village boards and commissions and the aging of the community's volunteer pool were among the issues that cropped up in a recent survey of Buffalo Grove residents conducted through the National Research Center.

The survey's results were discussed Monday in a workshop session that included village Trustees David Weidenfeld and Joanne Johnson and village staff, and then later at the village board's committee-of-the-whole session.

"There were three major themes that we talked about," Village Manager Dane Bragg said. "One of them is that we need to think about how we engage with our customers in less of the traditional way of local government and more as a true service provider."

Another theme was the need to find residents to serve on the village's boards and commissions in the years ahead.

"We (have had) a lot of volunteers who came on and have stuck with us," Bragg said. "But we don't necessarily have the bench filled behind that."

Lastly, Bragg said, there was discussion on how the village's boards and commissions can better reflect the community's diversity.

The 150-question survey was sent to 1,500 village residents, 438 of whom responded, said Michelle Miller Kobayashi, vice president of the National Research Center.

The results showed that neighborhood safety, cleanliness and education were the highest-ranked characteristics of the community, while cost of living, shopping opportunities and the lack of a vibrant downtown earned lower marks.

The highest rated services included fire, ambulance, crime prevention and garbage pickup. Lower rated were street repair, traffic signal timing, land-use planning and zoning, and sidewalk maintenance.

Kobayashi noted that the village lags when it comes to volunteerism, and many of those who do volunteer are older residents.

"We know from the survey that there is less volunteerism happening here than across the nation," she said. "A lot of the volunteers that are in the community are kind of aging out of the volunteerism."

The next step, Johnson said, is for the village board to create an action plan based on the survey results.

"It's got to be associated with real deliverables," Weidenfeld added.