Rocky View County will be conducting its first citizen satisfaction survey in more than a decade over the next four weeks to gauge the public on the municipality's programs and services.
Unlike their last survey conducted in 2009, this survey will have a social media component where citizens can opt in to provide their feedback, alongside the randomized phone survey interviews.
“Listening to our citizens is a priority for Rocky View County,” Mayor Don Kochan stated on the Rocky View County (RVC) website. “This survey provides residents with an opportunity to voice any concerns and share their needs regarding County matters.”
According to Kent Robinson, RVC’s executive director of corporate services, the survey will ask citizens about their quality of life in RVC through various categories. Those include their satisfaction with living in the community, services and programs offered by the County, media and communications of the County, and public engagement.
“Public engagement – the process for things like development, is it working for you? Are we doing a good enough job in that regard?” Robinson stated.
The City of Airdrie recently released results from its 2022 Citizen Satisfaction Survey, which showed an overall negative trend compared to the survey conducted in 2021.
“In the case of Airdrie, unfortunately we're living in times with COVID-19 and all those things that influence people's perspectives,” Robinson said. He added he didn’t want to speculate on the potential results of RVC’s survey results, as there has been such a long gap since RVC's last citizen satisfaction survey.
“I'm looking forward to seeing the results,” he said.
According to Robinson, the results will be used to inform council members and staff on how residents view the County’s programs and priorities, as well as dictate future strategic planning and budgets for RVC.
“If we see results [such as] if people find we are not communicating well enough with people or if we find they want a different method of communication, that will certainly influence our decisions moving forward,” Robinson said.
Whether the County will conduct more frequent surveys than they have in the past is subject to budget consideration, Robinson added.
“It's certainly something we want to do more often than every [12] years,” he said.
RVC contacted just over 500 people via phone during the previous survey in 2009, in order to get a representative group based on the county's population size at the time.
Robinson noted the results from the 2009 survey provided mostly good new stories and was conducted properly.
The new survey will run from March 21 to April 17. Respondents will either be phoned at random by the County or they can opt in to conduct the survey via social media.
All County residences will receive a ‘Your Say Rocky View County’ pin code in the mail for their opportunity to participate. If they have not received a pin code by April 5, they are asked to contact the County at 403-230-1401.
To find the survey online, RVC residents are encouraged to vist rockyview.ca/2022-citizen-satisfaction-survey
