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Health & Fitness

Gettin' Satisfaction in Lake Forest - Summary

Over the past few articles we’ve been looking at the “City’s report card”, namely, the biennial satisfaction survey in which the City pays True North Research to conduct a phone survey of 400 residents and ask them a series of questions. Our results are uniformly good, and City officials often quote from the survey to convince residents and businesses that our highly paid officials are doing a great job.

 

DON’T LISTEN TO THE HYPE

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On closer inspection, we discovered that the “great job” the City is doing is not a rare event among the cities that pay True North to survey their residents. In fact, almost every City does well, and many cities get even better reviews than we get, and their results are described in even more glowing terms than True North uses to praise our City. More specifically –

"Aliso Viejo residents are among the most satisfied resident groups that True North has encountered…" ALISO VIEJO

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"These are amazing scores, some of the best I’ve ever seen…" LAGUNA NIGUEL

"San Carlos is one of the Top Cities in the State when it comes to satisfaction with City Services and Programs." SAN CARLOS

 

DATA SHOW WE ARE DOING OK

Putting aside the hyperbole and looking at the data -

  • In terms of quality of life, 6 out of 10 cities have more residents who describe their quality of life as “excellent”.

  • In terms of satisfaction with city services, 4 out of 10 cities have more residents who are “very satisfied”.

  • In terms of communication, 4 of 11 cities have more residents who rate themselves as “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with efforts by the City to communicate with them.

  • In terms of listing things that should be changed, there was a higher consensus in Lake Forest than in any other city, with more than 10% of the residents selecting two areas (parks and traffic) that needed improvement.

The cities that consistently have better ratings than Lake Forest are Indian Wells, Laguna Niguel, and Mission Viejo. Readers of this column will be familiar with our close neighbors Mission Viejo and Laguna Niguel, but probably not Indian Wells, which is a small town in Riverside County near Palm Springs, best known for hosting the Bob Hope Desert Classic golf tournament. Indian Wells has 3000+ people, 95% of whom are white, with a median age of 66 years and a median household income of nearly $100,000.

 

WATCH OUT FOR QUESTIONABLE QUESTIONS

While the City’s survey results are clearly not as splendiferous as True North and our City officials would have us believe, they are nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about. As reported by residents, we seem to be performing in the middle of the pack on most indexes. However, there is a danger in taking these types of survey results too seriously, one way or the other. For one thing, the questions being asked are so general and at times misleading, that it’s difficult to understand what they mean. For example, under “Police Services” the survey asks how “satisfied you are with the job the City of Lake Forest is doing to…provide animal control services”. It turns out the Police have nothing to do with “animal control services”. So-called “animal control” for the City is handled by the County Animal Care and not by the Police. If you go to the City’s website and look up the FAQ about animal services you’ll find nothing about Police.

Another problem with this question is that it is not specific. What does “animal control” mean? It sounds like it means there are no rabid dogs running up and down the streets, which is true and good. But it might also mean that about 50% of the animals from Lake Forest that go to the County pound are killed within a week of being admitted, while in neighboring cities like Mission Viejo and Irvine the percent is less than 10. That‘s also true, but doesn’t sound so good. And if that is the question that was asked, you’d get a very different result compared with asking the question that is asked, about “animal control” as part of “police services”.

In the 2012 survey there are more than two dozen questions, many of which have subcategories that ask dozens more questions. But traffic is mentioned only once, as part of 10 multiple choice responses, and in this case the reference is to “reduce traffic congestion”! But what congestion are they talking about?

  • The congestion getting on and off the freeway?

  • The congestion in and around schools during pickup and drop-off?

  • The congestion on El Toro near the library and near Rockfield, where the lack of right turn lanes backs up cars for blocks?

Some of these items the City can do something about (traffic on El Toro) but other areas (e.g., freeway congestion) are beyond the scope of the City. If everyone is upset about the freeway congestion, there really isn’t anything the City can do about that, but if they’re upset with the lack of right hand turn lanes resulting in congestion on El Toro, the City is to blame!

 

LOOK FOR MISSING QUESTIONS

Apart from the questionable questions, there are missing questions. Year after year residents of Lake Forest say that traffic is a concern. Yet year after year True North doesn’t ask any questions about the lack of synchronized traffic lights, but if you talk to people, this is one of the chief concerns they raise. In a similar vein, Lake Forest has a disproportionate number of people being arrested for DUI, yet there isn’t a single question about the enforcement of DUI laws, or the easy access to alcohol in a city where many neighborhoods have 200%, 300%, and even more stores selling alcohol than is recommended by the statewide oversight agency. True North asks whether we are happy with “providing crossing guards near schools” but doesn’t bother to ask if we’re happy keeping drunks off the streets.

Think of the hot button issues we’ve had in Lake Forest in the past few years – medical marijuana, lack of a local animal shelter, too much development, etc. None of these issues appear in the survey.

I don’t want to belabor the point, but it should be obvious that there are significant problems in the research being done, so that conclusions based on this research need to be taken in the light of these methodological problems.

 

BOTTOM LINE

We’re doing OK. No need to put your home up for sale or go to the Psychiatrist and get some anti-depressants. On the other hand, we are not doing as well as we’ve been led to believe we are doing, by True North and by City officials. That’s true from a comparative point of view (where cities like MV and LN consistently do better than we do) and from an absolute point of view, where methodological issues in the survey research can obscure the results. Why does this matter? I’ll conclude with that answer tomorrow.

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