Community Survey Shows Most Residents Consider Roseville "Perfect Community for Me"

More than three quarters of Roseville citizens said Roseville was the “perfect community for me,” according to a survey conducted by Cobalt Community Research.

But other survey results showed that the survey respondents felt the city could be doing better in some areas, including property taxes and economic health. 

Results of the survey, which was commissioned at a cost of $10,000 by the city about a year ago, were presented to the Roseville’s city council at its Monday meeting.

“The intent was to get a statistically valid set of data about how the community feels about our services,” City Manager Bill Malinen said.

Cobalt’s executive director, William SaintAmour, spoke to the Council via a conference call. (Council member Tammy McGehee called him a “mythical figure.”)

“Looking at the data, you can certainly make the case that the community gets a high level of value from the dollars that they pay in taxes,” SaintAmour said.

He counseled the city to distinguish between “perception gaps,” in which the city is providing adequate services but needs to educate the citizenry, and “performance gaps,” in which substantive improvements need to be made.

The survey showed “relatively less strong” approval of the city in the areas of transportation, diversity, economic health and property taxes.

“As you look at economic health, one of the things you would want to think about is availability of jobs being one of the lowest scores along with stability of property values,” SaintAmour said.

In a discussion near the end of Monday’s meeting, Council members expressed doubts about the accuracy of the survey, which was conducted in relation to Imagine Roseville 2012.

“I don’t have 100 percent faith in the validity of the survey in terms of accurately representing what the community feels,” Council member Bob Willmus said. “There’s one question, ‘Are you happy with your garbage service?’ and, well, your answer to that’s going to be ‘Yes,’ because if you weren’t happy you’d switch to somebody else.”

Council member Jeff Johnson agreed.

“I don’t see the relevance of some of these questions to the people I’m connecting with,” he said.