The results are in from Sackville’s 2021 residents’ survey. 323 residents responded this year, the highest number in the four years that the town has conducted the survey.
Senior manager of corporate projects Kieran Miller says the information collected in the survey is used to help staff and council make decisions. “It really gives us kind of a touch point on where the community stands on a couple of different areas,” says Miller. “It helps set budget planning priorities, where we put resources, thinking about future projects and what we’re going to do next year. It really helps us make some of those decisions. So the more people that fill it out, the better.”
The town published selected results in an infographic on social media:
At CHMA’s request, Miller provided the full numerical results.
Survey respondents are not selected randomly, so the results have to be taken with a statistical grain of salt, as they don’t necessarily represent the opinions of the wider population of Sackville.
Overall, just about 74% of the survey respondents said they were mostly or very satisfied with the quality of life in Sackville. That’s down from 81% in the 2020 survey.
In their infographic, the town identified policing services and transparency as the “top two areas that could improve”, although the two issues do not appear in any of the multiple choice questions in the survey.
Policing and transparency were mentioned by survey respondents in a question asking for “the one most important issue facing your community that you feel should receive the greatest attention from your local leaders in the coming year.” The answers to that question were not multiple choice, rather they were written in by people responding to the survey, and so not provided to CHMA based on privacy concerns.
The top three responses to the priorities question were, “economic development and jobs, climate change and environmental sustainability, and COVID recovery for small businesses,” says Miller. “Policing services and transparency were not in the top three, but stood out as two areas where residents would like to see improvement,” she says.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CONTINUES TO DRAW ATTENTION IN 2021
Respondents were specifically asked to choose three town services that they felt needed to improve, and economic development was the most common selection by far, with 65% of those who answered choosing it. That was up from 54% in 2020.
“Economic development has been one of the top three priorities identified by residents in, I think, every survey we’ve done for the past four years,” says Miller. That is despite the fact that tourism and business development, managed by Ron Kelly Spurles, represent a relatively small portion of the town’s budget.
“There’s a difference between the actual role of the town and then the expectation from residents,” says Miller. “We do have a manager of business development and tourism, and he does do a number of different programs. This summer, we have a business development intern that has been running different workshops. So I think there is a lot more going on that the town is doing that maybe residents aren’t aware of.”
It’s also possible that much of what respondents consider economic development is not just the purview of the town’s business development department, but also the role that planning and other policies play in how the economic life of Sackville develops. For example, the rezoning application for an abattoir on Crescent Street and the town’s current ban on drive-thrus are widely considered to be economic development issues, as well as planning and transportation issues.
Just over 40% of respondents chose roads and sidewalks and police services as in need of improvement. “Roads and sidewalks are a pretty consistent concern from residents over the years,” says Miller. “I think this year in particular, we’ve seen a lot of concerns around speeding, which kind of ties in the police and roads.”
In last year’s survey, police services fared better, with just 24% of respondents asking for improvement. This year, policing also came up in the priorities question, says Miller, with people expressing concerns about crime rates and speeding, and “just overall residents’ sense of safety.” The concerns, as well as those around transparency, are being expressed just as town management made the decision to move monthly reports from the RCMP to an in camera portion of their meeting, though Sgt. Paul Gagné will still appear publicly four times a year to present a quarterly report.
When asked to choose the three town services they were most happy with, the responses were similar to last year. Over half of the survey’s 323 respondents included garbage collection and town parks and facilities in their top three “most happy with” list. Fire services and winter road and sidewalk conditions were not far behind with over 40% of respondents selecting each.
Results from Sackville’s 2021 residents’ survey, reflecting answers from 323 respondents.
FOLLOW UP SURVEY RESULTS COMING
The survey also asked respondents to rate their satisfaction on the town’s budget process and fiscal management, the town’s governance and leadership, and the town’s customer service. Both budget process and leadership had relatively high numbers of people not satisfied or only somewhat satisfied. So the town decided a follow up survey was in order, says Miller.
“We saw a couple of concerns around leadership, budget, and customer service,” says Miller. “Those three topics stood out from the first survey in March. So we had launched a second survey just looking for some follow up around those three specific areas.” That follow up survey closed on August 14.
“The numbers were a little bit confusing,” says Miller. Staff took note that although 60% of respondents said they were not or only somewhat satisfied with governance and leadership, five incumbents councillors were recently re-elected in May. And despite years of balanced budgets, 58% of respondents were somewhat or not satisfied with “the Town’s budget process and overall management of tax dollars.”
Of course, governance and leadership and not necessarily the same thing. While council is responsible for the ultimate values and fiscal decision making for the town, a considerable amount depends on the leadership of senior staff.
And the values for “budget process” can easily be set apart from success in management of tax dollars, since it often depends on the success of consultation and engagement with the public, and the perceived openness around the process.
Miller says the follow up survey allowed staff to “dig deeper” to better understand the specific issues people have had in those areas.
Next year the town will continue to tweak the survey and attempt to increase promotion and accessibility, to increase the number of respondents, says Miller. “I won’t say the survey is perfect. There’s definitely places that it could be improved,” says Miller. “Each year we kind of refine it a bit. We’re always working towards getting the best survey we can, so we get the best data we can get from it.”
