One item on council’s Feb. 5 Committee of the Whole agenda that piqued a lot of interest was the results of a $30,000 resident satisfaction survey conducted by Deloitte Canada. Staff also touched on the results of the city’s own Get Involved Burlington survey conducted around the same time.
Deloitte’s survey was conducted via telephone with 774 residents responding. Get Involved Burlington’s was strictly online with 572 responses.
Ward 2 Councillor Lisa Kearns questioned whether or not that was a good representation “in a city that’s growing” and was told that the Deloitte number, though small, did represent a fair sampling and was equally divided between each of the city’s six wards. Minor variances between wards came through for different topics and levels of satisfaction.
The Get Involved survey heard from fewer people with slightly different results, and had a few different questions, but overall echoed some of the other survey’s salient points.
However, more than one councillor asked if the online results could be skewed by one or more persons repeatedly filling out the survey. Staff admitted that they did not factor that into their equations but will look into methods to avoid that possibility in future surveys (expected in 2025).
The mayor and councillors took great notice of the drop in satisfaction levels in “council decision making, open, accountable, transparent local government.” Coming in at dead last in satisfaction in a list of 19 city services (76% compared to 98% for fire services or 85% for loose leaf collection, for example) the category dropped eight points from the 2021 survey results and from fifth-most importance to highest priority in 2023.
“When residents aren’t satisfied with what’s going on (in the world),” Deloitte representative Chris Bandak explained, “they tend to blame government for the problem.”
One difference between the Deloitte survey and Get Involved Burlington’s was that the latter included a response option of “Don’t know/no opinion,” which tended to be the most chosen response to many questions.
Deloitte limited the responses to four choices — “Very Dissatisfied”; “Dissatisfied”; “Somewhat Satisfied”; or “Very Satisfied” — with the latter two combined to represent positive results.
An example is the responses to “council decision making, open, accountable, transparent local government and communications” — the Deloitte survey said “81% of respondents were ‘somewhat satisfied’ (54%) to ‘very satisfied’ (27%). Still, this represents a drop from the 2021 result of a combined 89%.”
Results such as this prompted discussion on improving communications with the acknowledgement that more people get their information from the city’s website than traditional media, especially with the demise of the printed version of The Burlington Post.
Another Deloitte question found that 80% of residents at least “somewhat agree” that they would like to provide input to the city despite the fact that only 49% of residents are aware of Get Involved Burlington or that they can make a presentation to council. This prompted more questions from councillors about the effectiveness of the city’s communications messages and avenues.
Finally, residents most commonly mentioned road safety (18%) and cost of housing (16%) as issues that should receive the greatest attention from the mayor and members of City Council.
Mayor Marianne Meed Ward tried to put a positive note on the disappointing survey results by thanking the consultants and staff for a lengthy and in-depth amount of research and stating, “that the results could be better but overall it’s good news.”
For the full survey questions and results visit the Council of the Whole for Feb. 5 on the city’s Calendar page (Council and Committee Calendar) and click on “2023 community survey results (CC-01-24),” or go to the 2023 Community Survey page on Get Involved Burlington and click on the various survey reports.
