Strongsville Residents Don't Want To Pay More For Schools

STRONGSVILLE, OH — Strongsville residents do not want to pay more money to improve the school system, according to a new survey conducted by the city. While most residents are happy in the community, and particularly like the safe atmosphere and housing, they are also uninterested in paying more to improve almost any services or departments.

The exceptions to that are the fire and paramedic departments and the police department. Residents said they would be willing to pay more to improve both agencies.

However, the majority of residents said they would not pay to improve the following services or amenities in the city: the school district, health care services, the recreation center, the senior center, arts and culture activities, senior services, snow and ice removal, street repairs, transportation thoroughfares, water and sewers, public transportation, access to air service and Internet service.

A little more than half of the survey responses said they would not pay for improvements to the school district.

It's interesting to note the largest group of responding residents said they had no opinion on the quality of the city's public transportation, senior services or its senior center. Yet, more than half of respondents said the presence of the Strongsville Senior Center and senior services were either important or very important to them. About 43 percent of resident responders said public transportation was important to them.

Residents also said they thought road repairs and transportation thoroughfares in the city could use some work.

On the bright side, the majority of responding residents said they thought life in Strongsville was "good" and would recommend the city to someone looking to buy a house. More than 80 percent of residents said they would choose to live in Strongsville if they had to make that decision again.

Why the positivity? Most residents think the city's core agencies and functions are behaving well. The schools and housing market were both rated highly and residents said they think Strongsville is a safe community.

The city also pointed out that residents felt good about a number of agencies, including:

• Health care services (89% good to excellent)
• Police safety forces (87%)
• Fire-paramedic services (86%)
• Snow-ice removal (74%)
• Strongsville Recreation Center (71%)
• Access to air service (71%)

The city said that 3,529 households responded to the survey and answers were collected between December 2017 and March 2018. Residents had the ability to answer the survey questions online or by hard copy via mail.

The full survey can be reviewed by clicking here.

Photo from Google Earth