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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCompass Kitchener - 2005-07-06 COMPASS KITCHENER COMMITTEE MINUTES July 6, 2005CITY OF KITCHENER The Compass Kitchener Committee met on this date, commencing at 4:00 p.m. Present: John Hall, Glen Woolner, Pat Doherty, Paul Royston, Douglas Parker, Trudy Beauline Staff: Shelley Adams, Carla Ladd, Michael May, Glynis Martin Guest: Barry Watson, Environics Regrets: Don Bourgeois, Trudi Bunting Everyone briefly introduced themselves as this was Douglas Parker’s first meeting. 1. Environics Survey Barry Watson’s presented a “first look” at the main results from the survey done with Kitchener residents. There will be more work done on profiles which will be presented at our next meeting. Barry also wanted information on how we want to use this material internally and well as with others in the community. The survey asked people what they thought of city services, general issues about what they are happy about, how long they have lived in Kitchener, demographics, and what sort of ideas they have for the future of Kitchener. How would citizens like the City of Kitchener to develop? Environics also added social value questions to help understand what is important to people as individuals as well as to develop clusters of values to paint a picture of Kitchener citizens over all. Environics was hoping for 1,000 respondents and got 1,238, a representative sample with an age range was from 19 to 95. The survey was sent by mail and names of a representative sample were obtained from Canada Direct who specializes in putting together lists for research. The largest age group that responded were 25 to 44 with equal proportions of men and women. The numbers were compared to Kitchener census, Ontario, and Canada. There was no difference between this study and the data from Statistics Canada. The education level was tied between those that finished high school and had a vocation or trade with some college. Those that did not finish high school had the lowest number of respondents which is to be expected since they would have had the most difficulty filling out the survey. There were some open ended questions about what respondents liked most about Kitchener and responses were grouped into 4 categories: Quality of life 72% Culture/arts/activities 40% Parks and natural recreation 35% City services and government 10%. COMPASS KITCHENER COMMITTEE MINUTES July 6, 2005CITY OF KITCHENER - 2 - Overall respondents appreciated the city and the services it offered. This is the same as what one might expect in a “knowledge based economy” and a committee member said this information was the same of the original Compass Kitchener study. There were questions asked also about what was least liked about Kitchener and responses were grouped into 4 categories: Traffic and transportation 47% Dirty, run-down, unsafe areas 42% Inadequate services 21% Uncontrolled growth 12%. A member mentioned that this too was close to the original Compass Kitchener study, “almost one to one”, though the inadequate services related to health care then (to poor access to doctors). Barry mentioned that it related more to the city services focusing on municipal jurisdiction at this time. On the overall satisfaction with the municipality, 62 percent were satisfied with 23 percent being very satisfied, while 13 percent were somewhat dissatisfied and 1 percent very dissatisfied. Barry saw this as an average rating. It is important to see how many people give the city an “A”. Glen asked where the missing 1 percent was, Barry said there was no answer for this. When asked if people are satisfied with the city’s government, 63 percent of the people are satisfied, 17 percent very satisfied, 16 somewhat satisfied and 3 percent very dissatisfied. To see how satisfied and how familiar respondents are with the city look at the relationship between spending and satisfaction. In this chart, planning issues, city involvement in planning and transportation are all in the first quadrant. A member asked for clarification, is the chart set from low to high; is the vertical scale “how much” or “willingness to spend”? Barry confirmed that is was more willingness to spend. One interpretation of this chart is that people are satisfied and saying they are willing to spend more money. Barry stated that these are important services so people are happy with them, they promote doing a good job, and do not mind the spending but show how you are spending their money, parallel priorities that are important. For example, is this a pet project that has no public importance or is it of utmost importance to the public? A member asked about water being part of utilities and it was. This chart helps us to focus resources where it is needed as it shows the familiarity people have with city services, (i.e., use) and answers are not based on attitudinal perceptions. A participant mentioned that this matches with the customer services survey just done in another department. Barry went on to “feelings of safety”. How safe do people feel in downtown Kitchener? 72 percent expressed concerns regarding safety in the downtown after dark. This was surprising to some committee members. Barry mentioned that this figure was larger than Toronto. A member asked if the people actually came downtown or were they from the suburbs. It could be said that “perception is actuality”. This information is similar to the 2003 crime prevention study. Someone suggested that seniors do not want to do anything after dark. Barry will look at the profile of these respondents. He will focus on the most extreme (the 72 percent afraid to come downtown) to get a good profile. COMPASS KITCHENER COMMITTEE MINUTES July 6, 2005CITY OF KITCHENER - 3 - The next chart looks at questions on “vision of your community” over 20 years. It is interesting to see the degree to which people are actually divided. For example, in quality of life versus development, the split was 52:45. This is not much of a split but the split gets larger as we go down the chart. Overall on main issues there was no single, community held common view even when people were given questions that were worded to be either black or white. People were split down the middle. Sometimes the answers did not correspond, for example, multicultural community versus melting pot was 58:40 while common services for all versus meet individual needs of cultural groups was 67:32. Interestingly, high services versus low taxes was 69:27. 81:18, respondents thought Kitchener should have more of a leadership role in Waterloo Region. A question was asked regarding high citizen involvement versus looking after own priorities (93:8). A member suggested it was all for all instead of all for themselves. Barry mentioned that the role if involvement is very clear but on planning dimensions it is not so clear. You will have people saying the same things for different reasons so we have to tease it more to figure it out. Next, a social value framework is used on 2 dimensions – most traditional (conformity) and most independent (individualism) versus inner directed and outer directed. In looking at the 6 general groupings on the chart: 1. Group 1 (16 percent) and consists mainly of men, younger, well educated, success around the corner, they are pro development and are not concerned about anything; on the question about multiculturalism they say everyone should be the same so they prefer melting pot scenario. 2. Group 2 (15 percent) are more likely to be men, older, retired with high incomes. They are most resistant to change, most resistant on development and prefer the multicultural scenario. 3. Group 3 (9 percent) are younger, primarily males, the lowest income, least educated and have the lowest skilled jobs. 4. Group 4 (16 percent) are an older group, lower income, lower education and low representation of retirement, so many still “have to work”. Homeownership is low among this group but they have confidence in the government and want to stick with the small town image. They do not see opportunities in change since they are afraid of loosing what they have. 5. Group 5 (22 percent) is an enlightened group with equal proportions of men and women. They are older, educated with good incomes and have the broadest attitudes. They see where the opportunities are and also check out the risks to figure out how to deal with it. They are not pro development but are high on quality of life issues that concern them. They want their quality of life maintained. 6. Group 6 (22 percent) and mostly women (60 percent) with average to low education and income. They are struggling, work hard, are more traditional, not pro development but looking for opportunities and are appreciative of multicultural opportunities. They wonder how they can get ahead in life. These 6 groups are typical to Canadian society. A member asked which groups are pro development. Groups 1 and 6 are more mixed and have a “show me” attitude. It was noted that 42 percent are pro development versus do not change. How do these groups relate to other issues? We will have a complete picture the next time we meet. COMPASS KITCHENER COMMITTEE MINUTES July 6, 2005CITY OF KITCHENER - 4 - This is similar to the Re-urbanization Conference – who is in the market for downtown ? development? This may have implications for developing downtown, but values are different. Barry states that these groups are suited for live /work in same areas, e.g, studio apartment downtown for an entrepreneurial person working downtown – living downtown creates a street life that is seen as safe. This may be the way to change the image of downtown as “being unsafe”. A participant asked about the distribution of the survey. Barry replied that he doubts they are extreme biases. They mapped postal codes of respondents to see which clusters gave best results. The next time a survey is done this map could be used to get a better sample size so that the surveys do not have to be weighted afterwards. A member wanted to know if anyone used the translation service for these surveys. Shelley answered that some used staff members but no one used the translation services outside of City Hall. Barry said that seniors primarily called for clarification. It would be an interesting point of comparison to see if greater participation were from the older core (downtown) than from the suburbs. It was asked if we could see the postal code map later. A participant said she struggles with the map because of the potential of labeling groups of people. But that will not be the case if we just use it to look at geographic areas. For example, it would be interesting to see the profile of those who feel downtown is unsafe. Barry said that sometimes this type of information is useful and other times it is not. Our main focus now is to take these broad groupings and work sensitively with the information. The labels are working titles - finding the right balance in a “name” to create the right image will be tricky. We cannot risk stereotyping groups of people. Barry was asked if anything significant jumped out to him about this survey. He said that the safety issue surprised him, and that he thought the community was more homogeneous but finds it a bit polarized than he expected. A member thinks there is a gender, income, geographic split, do they line up. Do we have a two tiered community? Do we have a community of extremes? It is important to find out. It was suggested that we focus on the safety issues because that bears understanding. We should distil those that are speaking from experience versus from perception. A participant said that Toronto 30 years ago was facing the same problem; the perception of not being safe downtown was there. We are not at that point as we grow from a small town into a city. Some members would like to see how the likes and dislikes of services relate, they would like to see more detail on it and how it connects to the different groups. They also want to see more detail on the city participation in the community, who are the strong groups in this area, development versus intensification; how do we build a community? The city is undertaking a public input process this Fall regarding budget, asking the community to indicate their “choices”/priorities knowing that there is a threshold for paying higher taxes. What are the tradeoffs? What kind of discussion should we have on services? How might this information help us inform the discussions? COMPASS KITCHENER COMMITTEE MINUTES July 6, 2005CITY OF KITCHENER - 5 - Barry - bar charts list services and that is easy to understand. When two variables are added, it gets more difficult to understand; we have to plot and see where it is ranking, combined it or weed out some categories. For example, there are 4 measures for parking, combine it into one or weed out some parking measures. We can add on to the graph, perhaps colour code the dots based on how much people use a service, how happy are they, how should money be spent, and their familiarity with the service. Then these charts can be overlaid to see the different categories at the same time. It was suggested this would be good to show during the budget process to see where the services are used and what is used. This is the difference between perception and reality, i.e., satisfaction and value are different from a management point of view than from a citizen point of view. Possibilities for a series of charts for educational purposes – growth, social issues - so that we can get a good picture were explored. Barry will send Shelley a couple of different graphs. Someone asked how were headings used in other communities or are these common categories. Barry responded that the labels have local meaning, but characteristics may be similar to other Canadian city’s “groupings” or population segments. A member wants to see an overlay with the Markham survey and Shelley said that we may consider Markham for the sake of comparison to a similar size city, but it can be done later. It was suggested that we bring this information to a televised council meeting on October 3. It is a good idea to bring this forward before the budget. These services and vision are related and we should report to council to let them know what citizens find important. A subsequent process will confirm the vision. A series of town hall meetings at the same time as budget meetings being held with the public may lead to confusion and saturation – this could be a problem. The target to finalize this project is late Spring. We start in October and run through to June seamlessly on the project to keep the topic relevant. This information ties in to the budget, e.g., Culture Plan II is looking for money from the budget. A member suggested that we also tie this study to the original Compact Kitchener study. A participant cautioned that the old Compact Kitchener study was seen as taken from a small percentage of the population. We will show that we went broader this time. The next meeting will be August 3, 2005 at 4:00 p.m. Barry said that most of the analysis on the survey work would be done by then. He will present the information and introduce the process. We will also need meetings on September 7 and 21 to prepare for council. 2. Action Items Barry will work on profiles and bring almost finished analysis to next meeting * Committee has to figure out how to use this information internally as well as with public * 3. Adjournment Meeting adjourned 5:45 p.m.