11-19-2002 CC RPT 16 - Laserfiche WebLink

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People Serving People City of Riverside City Council Memorandum Honorable Mayor and City Council SUBJECT: 5th Annual Citizen Survey DATE: November 19, 2002 ITEM NO: ]_6 BACKGROUND: For the past five years, the City of Riverside has participated in a citizen survey mailed to randomly selected households throughout the City. The survey results dovetail neatly into the City's Managing for Results initiative, which seeks to focus government on the outcomes of its work. Although city governments might readily measure and track the inputs and direct outputs of our daily work, overall results are often elusive, or not measured on a systematic basis. Since the goal of government work is to make a positive impact on the community and the citizenry, ratings of how well we are doing are crucial. The City of Riverside is also continually striving towards excellence and responsiveness, the tenets of which exhort us to focus on performance. One of the core organizational values developed by city leadership is to ensure customer satisfaction of our service delivery and policy decisions. Citizen Survey results provide us with information regarding the extent to which we are living up to that promise. The questionnaire was mailed out in early June to a random sample of 3,000 residences and 300 apartment tenants across all zip codes. City staff used the Riverside Public Utilities database of single family residences and apartment dwellings. Riverside's Information Systems department provided the total number of "owner occupied houses" in each zip code. A weighted average from each zip code, excluding the 92521, 92522 zip codes (University of California, Riverside and City Hall) was used. The City's Information Systems department used a computer software program to choose the selected households in a random probability fashion thus minimizing sampling error. This enabled the analyst to present the results geographically. As suggested by the Governmental Affairs Committee, all responses to Question #24 were forwarded immediately upon receipt to the relevant department head and actions taken were presented in the survey report. Included in this year's Citizen document are: · Citizen Survey 2001/02 Survey Instrument · Maps illustrating distribution of responses for selected questions · Citizen Survey 2001/02 Data Report · Citizen Survey 2001/02 selected open-ended questions · Question 24 Report 16-1