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From YouTube: City of Bloomington: 2013 Resident Survey Results
Description
Bloomington residents continue to be highly satisfied with the City of Bloomington's services and overall direction, according to a new survey. The survey was conducted by the National Research Center (NRC), an independent research firm based in Boulder, Colorado.
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The
bloomington
city
council
adopted
the
10
performance
measures
back
in
2011.,
the
city
selected,
the
national
research
center
out
of
boulder
colorado
again
in
2013
to
conduct
its
citizen
survey.
The
national
research
center
was
selected
because
of
the
following
advantages.
First,
it
offered
a
lot
of
options
for
analyzing
the
data.
It
also
offered
the
opportunity
to
benchmark
against
their
database
of
500
communities
nationwide,
as
well
as
a
set
of
cities
of
the
city
of
bloomington's
choosing.
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The
assessment
method
was
by
mail
as
well
as
respondents
were
offered
the
option
to
go
online
to
fill
out
the
survey
the
city
of
bloomington
decided
to
expand
the
sample
again
this
year
from
the
standard
1200
homes,
that's
typically
offered
to
3
000
homes,
and
that
was
because
we
wanted
the
margin
of
error
to
be
reduced.
It
was
reduced
from
plus
or
minus
five
percent
to
plus
or
minus
three
percent.
As
a
result,
the
survey
was
mailed
to
respondents
twice
between
may
1
and
june.
5Th
of
the
response
rate
was
down
slightly
from
last
year.
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More
than
half
the
cost
of
the
survey
is
being
paid
for
by
the
state
auditor's
office
again
as
part
of
the
performance
measurement
program.
Looking
at
the
question
focus
areas,
we
tried
to
focus
on
community
strengths
and
weaknesses
in
this
survey
and
also
identify
our
service,
strengths
and
weaknesses.
Within
the
city
of
bloomington.
There
were
seven
focus
areas:
they
were
community
quality,
community
design,
public
safety,
environmental
sustainability,
recreation
and
well-being,
community
inclusiveness,
civic
engagement
and
public
trust.
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The
national
research
center
has
a
database
of
500
jurisdictions
around
the
country
that
we
could
compare
our
survey
results
against.
Then.
We
also
had
selected
surveys.
These
are
comparable.
Surveys
used
for
custom
comparisons,
so
the
city
of
bloomington's
planning
staff,
selected
21
cities
based
on
five
characteristics
that
we
wanted
to
be
compared
against
and
those
five
characteristics
were
the
type
of
management
within
that
city,
the
income
less
than
ninety
nine
thousand
dollars
per
household
demographics.
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Now,
let's
take
a
look
at
the
demographic
breakdown
of
the
respondents.
First
of
all,
in
terms
of
geographic
distribution,
the
survey
respondents
were
fairly
well
spread
out
across
the
city.
You'll
note:
there
are
open
spaces
within
the
map
of
bloomington
those
denote
commercial,
industrial
or
retail
areas
and
parks,
lakes,
open
spaces
or
undeveloped
property.
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Now,
let's
take
a
look
at
the
profile
of
the
respondents
to
the
survey,
the
respondent
profile
again
closely
tracked
bloomington's
2010
census,
as
well
as
the
survey
respondents
from
last
year's
citizen
survey.
There
were
slightly
more
females
than
males
in
the
respondent
profile.
Nearly
70
percent
of
the
respondents
own
their
own
homes,
41
percent,
have
lived
in
their
homes
for
more
than
20
years.
Two-Thirds
are
employed
either
full
or
part-time,
and
just
let
me
point
out
that
the
not
employed
category
is
not
the
same
as
unemployed.
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Bloomington's
unemployment
rate
is
under
five
percent,
so
this
particular
rate
of
32
percent
denotes
primarily
folks
who
are
out
of
the
workforce
because
they
are
retired
of
the
respondents.
Only
one
quarter
had
children
in
their
home
right
now
and
nearly
one-third
have
an
adult
of
65
or
older
in
the
household.
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Eighty-Seven
percent
of
those
polled
were
white,
followed
by
african-americans
and
asians.
At
six
percent,
and
hispanics
made
up
three
percent
of
the
respondents
in
terms
of
the
ages
of
the
respondents.
The
toughest
group
to
survey
is
typically
that
18
to
24
year
old
age
group,
because
they're
so
mobile,
but
we
still
did
get
four
percent
of
the
respondents
within
that
age
group.
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First,
looking
to
quality
of
life
in
bloomington,
most
residents
gave
high
ratings
to
their
neighborhoods
and
bloomington
as
a
place
to
live.
95
percent
praised
bloomington
as
a
place
to
live
that
was
much
above.
The
national
comparison
and
90
percent
again
stated
that
the
overall
quality
of
life
was
excellent
or
good,
similar
to
last
year's
ratings.
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A
variety
of
characteristics
were
evaluated
by
respondents
among
those
characteristics
receiving
the
most
favorable
ratings
in
the
survey
were
overall
image
or
reputation
of
bloomington
at
85
percent,
quality
of
the
natural
environment
at
88
percent
and
shopping
opportunities
at
84
percent.
You
can
see
these
ratings
are
generally
much
above
the
national
benchmarks
and
our
peer
communities
among
those
community
characteristics
receiving
the
least
positive
ratings
were
availability
of
affordable
quality,
child
care,
availability
of
affordable
quality
housing
and
ease
of
bus
travel.
Now
these
characteristics
were
the
same
ones.
That
last
year
received
the
least
positive
ratings.
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Nearly
75
percent
of
respondents
felt
the
city
was
on
the
right
track,
with
the
overall
direction
taken
by
the
city
rated
as
excellent
or
good,
and
that
placed
bloomington
in
the
top
15
percent
of
benchmark
communities.
Nationwide
bloomington
was
one
of
the
better
rated
communities
in
the
city.
Comparisons.
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When
looking
at
how
the
city
of
bloomington
ranked
against
the
county,
state
and
federal
governments,
residents
gave
the
highest
ratings
to
the
city
of
bloomington
and
the
lowest
to
the
federal
government.
However,
you'll
see
the
ratings
for
federal
state
and
county
governments
all
went
up
this
year.
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We
took
a
look
at
the
rankings
against
our
21
peer
cities
to
see
how
we
ranked
versus
the
other
cities
and
the
city.
Employee
ratings
were
higher
than
the
benchmarks
and
similar
to
last
year,
and
an
overall
impression
the
city's
employees
ranked
fourth
out
of
the
peer
cities
that
were
ranked,
and
they
were
much
above
in
the
pure
cities.
Comparison
next,
we'll
move
on
to
specific
city
services,
starting
with
transportation.
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In
fact,
bloomington
was
also
ranked
number
five
against
communities
nationwide,
those
500
communities
nationwide.
For
its
drinking
water
recycling
slipped
to
number
six
in
the
peer
cities,
rankings
and
garbage
collection
dropped
to
number
seven
in
terms
of
community
appearance.
The
overall
appearance
of
bloomington
was
rated
as
excellent
or
good
by
79
of
respondents.
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75
percent
of
respondents
again
said
that
the
quality
of
new
development
was
excellent
or
good,
much
higher
than
the
national
benchmark
and
similar
to
the
beer
benchmark.
Only
five
percent
of
those
polled
thought
that
rundown
buildings,
weeds
and
junk
vehicles
were
a
major
problem
in
terms
of
code
enforcement.
The
areas
of
land
use
planning
and
zoning
code
enforcement
and
animal
control
were
all
much
above
the
national
benchmarks.
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In
fact,
land
use,
planning
and
zoning
was
ranked
in
the
top
nine
percent
of
the
benchmark
communities
nationwide
in
our
peer
cities,
rankings
land
use
planning
and
zoning
also
ranked
number
two
and
now
taking
a
look
at
public
safety
residents
were
asked
to
rate
their
feelings
of
safety
from
crime
in
their
neighborhoods
and
in
the
city's
shopping
areas,
both
during
the
day
and
at
night,
and,
as
you
can
see,
their
feelings
of
safety
improved
slightly
from
last
year's
survey,
particularly
in
shopping
areas.
After
dark,
these
ratings
are
much
above
the
national
and
peer
cities.
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Benchmarks
residents
also
were
asked
to
rate
the
city's
public
safety
services
and
they
did
rate
them
highly.
All
were
rated
much
above
the
benchmark
comparisons
and,
as
you
can
see,
the
ratings
were
fairly
similar
to
last
year
when
looking
at
the
pierce
city's
rankings,
bloomington's
traffic
enforcement
is
number
two
and
police
number
three.
In
fact,
the
city's
police
services
and
traffic
enforcement
both
ranked
in
the
top
12
percent
of
such
services
nationwide.
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Looking
now
at
parks
and
recreation,
ratings
of
the
city's
parks
and
recreation
programs
were
much
above
the
national
benchmarks.
However,
the
city's
recreation,
centers
and
facilities
were
similar
to
the
pure
city's
benchmarks
in
the
peer
cities,
rankings,
recreation,
centers
and
facilities
ranked
number
nine
again.
This
year,
residents
were
also
asked
about
their
sources
of
information
for
the
city
of
bloomington,
and
the
city's
newsletter
at
the
bloomington
briefing
is
still
a
key
source
of
information
for
residents
with
85
percent
reporting
that
they
read
the
city's
newsletter.
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One
of
the
features
that
the
national
research
center
offers
in
its
survey
is
a
key
driver
analysis.
Well,
a
key
driver
analysis
examines
the
relationships
between
ratings
for
each
service
and
the
ratings
of
the
city
services.
Overall,
it
tries
to
dig
deeper
to
identify
the
less
obvious,
but
more
influential
services
that
are
most
related
to
residents,
opinions
and
their
ratings
of
overall
quality
of
their
local
government.
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The
national
research
center's
national
citizen
survey
also
asked
two
custom
questions
that
were
designed
by
the
city
of
bloomington.
This
is
the
first
of
the
two
custom
questions
and
it
focused
on
how
important
it
was
for
the
city
to
address
a
variety
of
issues
in
bloomington
over
the
next
five
years.