While many Black Diamond residents would recommend their Town to others as a place to live, they say there’s still room for improvement.
Three hundred and eleven people shared their opinions on topics of communication, recreation, facilities, spending, transportation and community services in the Town’s 2015 citizen satisfaction survey mailed to 905 homes last fall.
The results will be passed on to the Strategic Plan Steering Committee to review in March and present recommendations to the Town later this year.
“It helps the town focus and figure out where they are going to spend their money on all sorts of things,” explained Joanne Irwin, the Town chief administrative officer. “It also helps us and council to know what’s important to citizens and helps them to prioritize. This type of survey helps collect information from a lot of people who are otherwise silent.”
The survey results show the highest level of satisfaction is in how residents view their community.
Ninety-six per cent rated the overall safety of their neighbourhood and quality of life as either good or excellent, and 91 per cent would recommend the town to others as a place to live.
When asked if the Town is doing a good job, 71 per cent were satisfied and 47 per cent believe they receive good value for the taxes they pay.
When asked to rate the most important issues to consider the next five years, residents chose keeping within moderate tax increases, water quality and supply and keeping Black Diamond affordable and viable.
As for the most important areas to fund if taxes were to increase to improve services and/or infrastructure, citizens selected economic development, roads, pathways and green spaces.
Services that rated the highest in satisfaction among 22 items listed include garbage collection, fire services, water and sewer services, while those rated lowest are economic development, family and community services and planning and development.
“We want to make sure we are doing what the citizens want us to do and the cost that it costs the town to do those services are worth it,” Irwin said. “We have a limited amount of money, which we are raising mostly through taxation.”
Satisfaction that recreation facilities meet the needs of the community was rated at 78 per cent.
Irwin said a new section added to last year’s survey was communication.
“That’s one of the things we are trying to key in on is is the way we are communicating make sense to the residents for the cost it was costing,” she said.
Irwin said immediately following the 2013 flood, the Town launched a Facebook page to communicate with residents.
“We had no way to push out information,” she said. “At one point we couldn’t get online to our website.”
The survey results reveal 44 per cent of those surveyed use social media.
Of those, 76 per cent “like” or “follow” the Town on social media.
The survey also addressed the topic of commuting.
It determined that 58 per cent of those surveyed have someone in the home who commutes out of town for work or school.
Among those, 61 per cent travel to Calgary, 36 per cent to Okotoks and the remaining to another location.
Fifty-one per cent stated they would use a public transportation option.
When it came to public satisfaction regarding the overall direction the town and council is taking, 58 per cent of those surveyed were satisfied.
Fifthy-five per cent were satisfied with the availability of councilors and mayor to the public, 44 per cent with the performance of council, 36 per cent with response time and 33 per cent with the conduct at council meetings.
Black Diamond mayor Sharlene Brown said council does its best to meet the needs of citizens.
“When there are controversial issues everybody has a turn to be listened to,” she said. “We may make decisions that are not necessarily in the same vein as the public desires.”
As for response time, Brown said when council members or staff are asked to collect information from a previous decade it often takes longer to research than to find answers to simpler questions.
“There’s other priorities,” she said. “Unfortunately in the last three years we have seen a tremendous amount of priorities coming on our council and administration is mainly still working with 2013 flood.
“The information is not something that’s readily available and it takes staff time to do that research.”
The last citizen satisfaction survey was conducted in 2012.
Irwin said the results prompted the Town to put a larger focus on pathways and that priorities will be set as a result of last fall’s survey.
“It helps council to focus on its priorities based on what the needs of the citizens are,” she said. “It’s a really important tool for fact finding and determining what the pulse of the community is, what are they really concerned about and what they are happy about.”
