Every two years, Tacoma city government conducts a survey of randomly selected households to solicit these residents’ feedback on important issues ranging from livability in their neighborhoods to city services and their perceptions of safety where they live and wherever they travel in Tacoma.
Each of the city’s five council districts are represented in who the survey goes to, which gives the council a snapshot of respondents sharing their most imminent priorities on which issues their council representatives should prioritize. The 2024 community survey was conducted this past June and July, making for a fresh result of residents’ perspectives on what’s happening now in this moment.
The city’s goal was to receive 900 completed surveys, 150 from each council district. In all, these goals were met with 905 surveys collected. Key demographics including race, gender, and household income were matched to census data to ensure that survey respondents were representative of the overall Tacoma population. Mailed paper surveys included lines in Russian, Ukrainian, Korean, Khmer, Vietnamese, and Spanish to inform residents who preferred to complete the survey in another language and go online to find their preferred language.
This is the first time that market research and survey company ETC Institute conducted Tacoma’s community survey after having completed a survey for Metro Parks last year. In a presentation to Tacoma City Council on Aug. 6, ETC Institute Assistant Director of Community Research Ryan Murray joined the city’s Chief Strategy Officer Jacques Colon Strategic Initiatives Coordinator Ted Richardson to review the survey findings.
“Any good strategy must start with a clear vision. For us, a community vision is that North Star at our starting point,” Colon said.
“We take the results of what we hear from community and we use those results to inform all that we do including strategic initiatives such as our strategic plan Tacoma 2025 and our next strategic plan, Tacoma 2035, which you’ll hear more about in the coming months, the Community Safety Action Strategy, which you’ll hear more about next week, and our Comprehensive Plan, just to name a few,” Colon told the council.
He noted that for the city council and departments to formulate strategies for city advancement, the first step is to understand what the vision of the community is.
“Once we can reflect that vision clearly and show folks that we are not just understanding but acting upon that vision in effective ways, that is how we build belief and trust in the community,” he said.
Living In Tacoma
Murray began his presentation with the survey portion that inquired about overall perceptions of living in Tacoma. Ratings were high when it comes to accessing daily essentials like grocery stores and schools, having a feeling of belonging in the community, and overall quality of life, but ratings declined in the overall appearance and image of Tacoma, the city’s management of growth, and overall value received for taxes and fees. Murray said this reflects a trend happening in cities across the country for the last two years.
In response to the survey question asking respondents to rate their trust in Tacoma’s municipal government as “excellent,” “good,” “fair” or “poor,” 40 percent chose “fair” and 36 percent chose “poor”
“We asked respondents how much they trust Tacoma’s municipal government and trust is relatively low,” Murray stated. “Building that trust is going to take time and will take the city responding to some of those engagement efforts in order to start to build trust, shift those perceptions, and continue to move forward.”
Regarding perceptions related to jobs and economy, ratings were overall positive in respondents’ length of commute to work, finding livable wage jobs in the city and having access to job training programs and services. Ratings dropped concerning the overall economic health of Tacoma, with 46 percent choosing “dissatisfied/very dissatisfied,” and 59 percent giving this same rating to the cost of living in Tacoma.
General perceptions regarding satisfaction with overall major city services showed a wide margin of “satisfied” and “neutral” responses. “Dissatisfied/very dissatisfied” ratings were given for access to affordable food (40 percent), transportation safety (42 percent) and ease of bicycle travel (39 percent).
“What we’ll typically understand is that neutral ratings are kind of a passing grade – that, ‘You haven’t made a negative or positive impact in my mind on this particular item,’” Murray said. “What I’ve seen in some of the other survey results would suggest that folks are thinking that these items are very important to them and their household.”
Satisfaction with police services came in with an overall rating of 46 percent of respondents being “dissatisfied/very dissatisfied.” This question was broken down into specific areas showing “dissatisfied/very dissatisfied” with how quickly police respond to emergencies (56 percent), police patrol (56 percent), efforts by police to prevent crime (59 percent), police investigations (51 percent), and enforcement of local codes and ordinances (58 percent).
Police community programs received a higher rating, with 46 percent of respondents choosing “neutral” and 39 percent choosing “dissatisfied/very dissatisfied.”
Fire and EMS services received much higher ratings overall. How quickly fire services personnel respond to emergencies received 49 percent as “satisfied,” fire response and suppression at 53 percent “satisfied,” how quickly emergency medical services personnel respond to emergencies at 48 percent “satisfied,” and overall quality of emergency medical services at 46 percent “satisfied.”
Respondents were asked to rate the importance of public safety aspects and 51 percent indicated police efforts to prevent crime as the top priority that TPD should keep focusing on. The other two among the top three were police patrols as second and quick response to emergencies as third.
“Based on the relatively low satisfaction ratings and relatively high importance ratings of these three items, they come out to be our highest opportunities for improvement based on the important satisfaction ratings,” Murray said.
Moving on to satisfaction with public works and utilities, “Overall, your utility services are performing exceptionally well,” Murray said. “We also have really high ratings for stormwater management and flood control, and utility billing and customer service, which is a very tough one to receive a 57 percent ‘very satisfied’ or ‘satisfied’ ranking.”
On the lowest end were the quality of on-street bicycle infrastructure, the condition of major streets, and the cleanliness of streets and public areas. Street conditions and cleanliness were listed as respondents’ top two priorities with walkability in neighborhoods at third.
Safety and Homelessness
How the city communicates with residents was another survey topic. This question received a majority of responses as “neutral” when it comes to the usefulness of the city’s website, availability of information about local government services and activities, use of social media, and the TV Tacoma channel. At the bottom was the level of public involvement in local decision-making, showing that 47 percent of respondents are “dissatisfied/very dissatisfied.”
Respondents’ top three ratings regarding city communication first lists efforts by local government to keep residents informed about issues followed by the availability of information about local government services and activities, and the level of involvement in local decision making as third.
Survey inquiries on perceptions of safety showed ratings higher than overall police ratings. As Murray interpreted from the responses, “Most folks are feeling pretty safe in their neighborhoods during the day and as we got to downtown areas, we’re seeing just under 24 percent of respondents indicating that they feel ‘very safe’ or ‘safe’ and 51 percent feel ‘unsafe/very unsafe.’”
About 70 percent of respondents indicated that they want the city to address homelessness as a method to make the downtown area’s environment safer.
Additional priorities among survey respondents were collected by rating the importance of this statement: “In the future, daily essentials such as groceries, schools, parks and healthcare should be a safe and short walk, bus, train, or bike ride away for every resident.” The vast majority of respondents, 56 percent, chose “strongly agree” and 27 percent chose “agree.”
“It’s very difficult sometimes to assess how well we’re actually performing in some of these areas because all of these items are kind of in the eye of the beholder,” as Murray stated it.
Again, in this survey section, addressing homelessness was the number one neighborhood priority followed by housing affordability and community safety in the top three. Funding priorities started with homelessness encampment outreach and cleanup then mental health and substance use, and youth violence reduction as third.
Murray, Colon and Richardson emphasized that these survey results reflect the thoughts and feelings of respondents at the moment of taking the survey and that perceptions can fluctuate over time depending on the mindset and experiences of those taking the survey.
To view the City of Tacoma’s full survey results, explore the original news release from Tacoma Weekly posted August 12th, 2024.