Oklahoma City citizens pleased with city, want better transit

August 15, 2007

OKLAHOMA CITY – City residents are pleased with Oklahoma City but still looking to more transportation improvements, a citizen survey showed Tuesday.“What really stands out to me, though, is the fact that most people think the city is moving in the right direction,” said Chris Tatham of the Kansas-based ETC Institute, which conducted a citywide citizens’ survey. About two of every three responding residents said they were satisfied with the quality of life in Oklahoma City, while 21 were neutral and 10 percent were dissatisfied.

“Nationally, less than half the residents in any community give their city (in which) they live positive ratings for overall quality of city services,” he told Oklahoma City Council members. And here in Oklahoma City, two out of three people gave positive ratings … almost 20 percentage points above the national average. You’re doing a great job at delivering city services.”The survey was conducted earlier this summer; the company did the same thing for Oklahoma City in late 2005.

The random sampling of 3,000 residents produced a stronger response rate than ETC expected this year, Tatham said, yielding a high confidence rating and a 2.8-percent margin of error. The three major service areas that residents felt were most important for City Hall to emphasize over the next two years were the maintenance of city streets, the flow of traffic and the quality of the city’s public transit system. Street maintenance easily beat out the other topics with 76 percent of respondents citing it.About 79 percent of residents said they were currently satisfied with emergency services and 75 percent said they were satisfied with water utilities. But only 18 percent said they were satisfied with street maintenance.

“This tells us we need to work on our roads,” City Manager Jim Couch said. “I don’t mean to sound flippant, but that’s what these results are saying.”City Hall received similar survey responses earlier this year in preparation for a $755 million general obligation bond issue expected to go before voters for approval in December. The vast majority of the bond issue, if passed, would pay for projects related to the city’s street infrastructure. About $147 million is earmarked for road resurfacing, with $171 million set for street widening and $104 million for streetscaping.

Couch said it was gratifying to get strong results of overall satisfaction, but that the survey is merely an ongoing effort to respond to what citizens want for their city. Such feedback is invaluable for a business plan in which the citizens are considered consumers of city services.“We go out there and it kind of bares our soul to find out exactly where we rank in all these categories,” Couch said. “But I think it’s really positive for us to continue in this area and find out from our citizens, whom we all work for, where they think we need to improve.“This is where the rubber meets the road,” he said.City Hall spokeswoman Kristy Yager said survey results soon will be available online for public review at City of Oklahoma City | News.



A Metro Transit bus Tuesday heads south on Robinson Avenue. (Photo by Jennifer Pitts)