St. Charles Releases Results From 2016 Resident Survey

ST. CHARLES, IL - The city of St. Charles has released the results of the 2016 Resident Survey, which assesses residents’ perspectives on the overall quality of life in St. Charles.

In general, survey respondents felt St. Charles is safe, clean and well maintained, according to city officials. They also like the direction economic development is headed in.

A survey of residents has been conducted since 1996 with the last one performed in 2013.

The city once again administered the National Citizen Survey, a standardized survey that is used by communities across the country. 1500 surveys were distributed to a statistical sample of St. Charles residents in October 2016, according to a city of St. Charles news release.

Respondents rated questions about the quality of city services as Excellent, Good, Fair or Poor.

Of those who took the survey, 96 percent said St. Charles is an “Excellent” or “Good” place to live. Other areas rated Excellent or Good:

• Overall Quality of Life: 94 percent
• Overall City services: 91 percent

Areas the city excels in:

• Residents are satisfied with Public Safety: Fire Services (98 percent) and Police Services (93 percent)
• And applaud Public Works Services: Snow Removal (83 percent), Storm Drainage (83 percent), Street Repair (65 percent)

Areas the City Improved on Since the Last Survey

Rated Excellent or Good:

• Overall Image of St. Charles: 96 percent up from 89 percent
• St. Charles as a Place to Raise Children: 96 percent up from 90 percent
• Overall Appearance: 95 percent up from 88 percent
• Cleanliness: 97 percent up from 92 percent
• Quality of Economic Development: 57 percent up from 44 percent

“We are once again encouraged by these survey results,” said St. Charles city administrator Mark Koenen. “The survey is an important tool to help us understand residents’ perspectives. While the results showed an improvement in most categories surveyed, they also showed a couple areas that we need to work on.”

The city’s portion of the total property tax bill is less than 10 percent ($881 on the average $300,000 house), however residents satisfaction with the value of services for taxes paid dropped from 69 to 53 percent. And although the city’s electric reliability outperforms the largest electricity provider in our area (average city outage 42 minutes versus 112 minutes), reported satisfaction with the utility fell from 88 to 79 percent.

Improving residents’ satisfaction in those areas is a priority, city officials said.

Full survey results are posted on the city’s website.