Survey Assesses Satisfaction With City and Services

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A Newsletter by the City of Saco, Maine	May, 2006	Return to newsletter index

Findings this year on the governmental performance of the City of Saco still offer good news for the city organization and the greater community, both in terms of recognition of successes and insights into areas for improvement.

In general, citizens rated the city positively overall, based on this year's survey results, with few exceptions. For overall quality of life in the city and for feelings of safety in the city, over 80% of citizens surveyed rated the city as "good" or "excellent." As a place to live, Saco was seen as "good" or "excellent" by 90% of citizens responding, and 81.8% of citizens surveyed rated Saco as a "good" or "excellent" place to raise children. These positive measures of satisfaction reflect well on the city organization.

For direct measures of performance of the organization, citizen ratings remain positive. In considering overall quality of service from city employees, over 72% rated the city as "good" or excellent," with only 6% "somewhat dissatisfied" or "very dissatisfied." Ratings of each department (discussed in detail following this section) range from a top mean rating of 4.51 for the Fire Department's overall service, to a 3.47, for the Planning and Development Department, on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 means poor and where 5 means excellent. The Strategic Marketing Services analysis of the citizen survey commented:

"Similar to 2004, the ratings recorded across all sections of this survey indicate a consistent level of satisfaction among Saco residents with City service and administration."

Highlights from the city departments' own performance assessments that follow include:

The City's Distinguished Budget Presentation completed on time and recognized with a national award (see pg 22).
Continuing road work with 87% of all roads achieving satisfactory ratings (see pg 33).
Average response time of 4 hours to complaints of code enforcement violations (see pg 47).
Emergency services response times of under 5 minutes in 63% of incidents (see pg 76).
Average police response times of 3.4 minutes to domestic disturbance issues (see pg 81).
Program offerings in 2005 by Parks & Recreation increased substantially (see pg 55).
Four major plans completed in 2005 by Planning & Development Department (see pg 64).
69% of records dating back as far as 1796 restored for future generations (see pg 69).
Lower sewer user fees for 2005 (see pg 89).

-Strategic Marketing Services (2005). Report to the City of Saco, Maine. Unpublished.

The city continues to learn more about what needs to be done better. The two key areas that the City of Saco has recognized through this process as in need of improvement are in communications with citizens, and in addressing issues surrounding growth in the community.

Despite ongoing efforts, the city still appears not to have improved communications with citizens substantially. Response this year to 2 survey questions on communication efforts by the city remain between neutral and somewhat satisfactory with mean ratings of 3.49 and 3.46 (almost identical to 2004 ratings) on a 1 to 5 scale.

As well, while use of the city's website, one of the city's main vehicles for citizen communication, is up in 2005 to 48.4% from 40.1% in 2004 for overall usage by survey respondents, 70.8% still are not very or not at all likely to conduct city business online (versus 69% in 2004). Further, over half (51.5%) of respondents in 2005 say they never visit the city's website (a modest improvement over 58.3% in 2004), and 81.3% indicated they had never seen or read the city's newsletter, published primarily online but also available on paper.

The city realizes the importance of communication with citizens and a website for interacting with citizens, but the city probably still is not doing a good job at getting citizens to join them online or otherwise getting the message out. Newspapers appear to remain the best way to connect with citizens (63.8% in 2005 and 67% in 2004 of respondents identified newspapers as how they get information about the city budget), so this report will be formatted to a newsletter version for broader distribution, hopefully to include local newspapers.

The much larger issue for the city that already is recognized throughout the organization, the community, and through the survey process, is around growth of the community. Indicators about the issue of growth from the city's internal performance assessments include comments on meeting greater demand, such as in increased permitting activity for Codes, and the changing needs of citizens, as with Parks & Recreations' plans for new programs to better meet citizen preferences. Managing growth is not a new issue for the city - the Strategic Plan includes an entire goal dedicated to this concern.

Indicators about the issue of growth of the community from the citizen survey echo the concerns of the city organization. In 2005, 44% of survey respondents said that the level of growth in Saco was "too much" (44.3% in 2004), while 45.8% said it was "about right" (48% in 2004); the community appears split on the issue. Furthermore, ratings for the city's planning for growth continue to be fairly weak, with only 36.6% in 2005 saying such planning was "good" or "excellent" (36% in 2004).

During efforts this year with citizens to further develop this report and update the strategic plan, the key attributes for inclusion in a citizen-developed vision statement for the city were "valuing heritage," "cherishing the environment," and "balancing growth." That vision statement by the citizens was then supported as an accurate description of what the city is or is trying to become by 77.8% of survey respondents.

All of this information argues that the issue of growth is highly important to citizens and that collaborative work with citizens on the issue of growth would be well received. Efforts are made to include citizens in planning efforts, such as with inclusion on the Planning Board, but that may not be enough. Suggestions from the citizen group developing the vision included initiating a Citizens Advisory Board to the Planning Department that would attempt to address the issue of growth in the community.

In closing, the City of Saco continues to report strong citizen satisfaction with its performance at this time. As well, the city can report that its own assessment of performance calls for ongoing improvements in service delivery, accompanied by improvements in developing and reporting measurements of its performance in the future. Finally, the city recognizes the two issues of communications and growth in Saco that face the city and community overall, and will continue to strive to develop satisfactory responses to concerns in these areas with the help of all stakeholders: citizens, council members and city staff.

You may download a copy of the report by following this link.