How do you think Metro is doing? Elected officials across the region weighed in on this question and more in a survey designed to help Metro understand community perspectives and improve the regional government’s performance.
Local elected officials see value in Metro – but they also see room for improvement, the Metro Council heard this week.
The big picture was encouraging with 72 percent of respondents agreeing that Metro generally has a positive impact on their constituents.
Most elected officials also rated Metro positively for the way it handles natural areas and regional parks (62 percent), as well as managing solid waste (57 percent). And 48 percent felt Metro did an excellent or very good job of operating visitor venues.
But Metro received criticism in its planning and land use role for the region. Only 38 percent rated Metro's ability to manage the urban growth boundary positively and 33 percent felt Metro did a good job of regional land use and transportation planning.
Councilors discussed the low approval of the agency's planning efforts and what could be done to improve the response. Several expressed frustration at the poor rating, but felt little could be done to change it.
"We have some authority over aspects of these communities and there will always be discomfort with that from elected officials," Councilor Kathryn Harrington said during the Metro Council's discussion of the survey results.
More focus was put on areas that the council did have control over, such as awareness of regional parks. More than 45 percent of respondents didn’t know about Metro's efforts with Blue Lake Regional Park, the Glendoveer Golf Course and Cooper Mountain Nature Park. A similar number didn’t know about the agency’s work with public boat ramps.
Communicating with elected officials also came up as an area for improvement, with only 5 percent of respondents typically getting information about Metro from Metro Councilors. However, other communications from Metro ranked highly with 78 percent getting information from Metro emails, 49 percent from the agency's website and 39 percent from Metro News.
The survey of elected officials goes out to all 160 mayors, county commissioners and city councilors that fall within Metro's jurisdiction. This year the response rate was 42 percent with 67 responses.
"The participation is very good," said Tom Eiland partner at CFM Strategic Communications, the firm that conducted the survey. "And participation has increased every year since 2011."
But councilors expressed concerned with what they felt was poor turnout and discussed ways to improve the response rate including personally inviting regional officials to respond and changing the date of the survey to avoid budget season.
Metro started the survey in 2011 to provide a way for a key audience to evaluate the agency’s performance. And the results have remained fairly stable over time, which should be encouraging for Metro said Eiland.
"Opinions aren't changing and are consistent," Eiland said. "After three [surveys] you can speak more confidently about this being the opinion of the group."