City of St. Charles survey results maintain resident satisfaction levels
The City of St. Charles has released the results of the 2016 resident survey, which assesses residents' perspectives on the overall quality of life in St. Charles. The city has conducted a survey of residents since 1996, with the last one performed in 2013.
The city once again used 1,500 surveys were distributed to a statistical sample of St. Charles residents in October 2016. Respondents rated questions about the quality of city services as excellent, good, fair or poor.
Key findings:
In general, survey respondents feel St. Charles is safe, clean and well maintained. They also like the direction economic development is headed in.
Overall snapshot:
96 percent said St. Charles is an "excellent" or "good" place to live. Other areas rated excellent or good:
• Overall quality of life: 94 percent
• Overall city services: 91 percent
Areas the city excels:
• Residents are satisfied with public safety: Fire services (98 percent) and police services (93 percent)
• And applaud public works services: Snow removal (83 percent), Storm drainage (83 percent), street repair (65 percent)
Areas the city improved on since the last survey:
• Overall image of St. Charles: 96 percent up from 89 percent
• St. Charles as a place to raise children: 96 percent up from 90 percent
• Overall appearance: 95 percent up from 88 percent
• Cleanliness: 97 percent from 92 percent
"We are once again encouraged by these survey results," said City Administrator Mark Koenen. "The survey is an important tool to help us understand residents' perspectives. While the results showed an improvement in most categories surveyed, they also showed a couple areas that we need to work on. Despite the fact that the city's portion of the total property tax bill is less than 10 percent ($881 on the average $300,000 house), value of services for taxes paid dropped from 69 percent to 53 percent. And although our electric reliability outperforms the largest electricity provider in our area (average city outage 42 mins. vs 112 mins.), reported satisfaction with the utility fell from 88 percent to 79 percent. Improving residents' satisfaction in those areas is a priority."
Full survey results are posted on the city's website at www.stcharlesil.gov/documents/citizen-priorities-survey-results.