While Santa Clarita residents shared general satisfaction with city services in a recent poll conducted by a consultant, most residents expressed varying levels of concerns about the area’s growth and public safety, per the results shared by the city.
When asked about the most important issue facing residents in an open-ended fashion, most said public safety, with 23.7% of respondents indicating that was their primary concern.
(Here’s a link to the poll: https://santaclarita.gov/public-opinion-polls)
However, overdevelopment/growth (18%) and traffic congestion (17.8%), which are quite closely connected for most, were Nos. 2 and 3.
Homelessness was the fourth-ranked answer at (13.6%) in the poll that was conducted just two weeks before the city celebrated the opening of its first year-round homeless shelter on May 20.
The fifth answer was “not sure/can’t think of anything specific (13.2%),” followed by affordable housing (8.9%).
Limiting growth also was the No. 1 answer in 2022, while the pandemic year of 2020 had people respond “not sure” as their No. 1 issue, and in 2018, it was once again limiting growth.
Those who were happy said the most common reason given was “Beautiful, clean city, no graffiti, well-landscaped,” which was listed by 17.1%
The top-two issues for those who were unhappy with the city were listed as “Slow, inadequate response to resident needs, requests” at 14.9% and “Public safety, need more emergency personnel, police service” at 11.2%.
When residents were given a list of priorities and asked to rank them, at the top of the list was “Providing fire protection and prevention services,” which was extremely important to 69.2% and very important to 27.8%. That was followed by preparing for emergencies and managing traffic congestion.
At the bottom of the pollster’s list was “Providing library services,” “Supporting homeless services,” “Providing special events like Cowboy Festival,” and finally, “Providing diversity and inclusion programs,” which ranked at 25.4% and 26.9% for extremely important and very important, respectively.
The results also looked at what residents would like to see in terms of new locations being attracted to the area.
“The most commonly mentioned type of restaurant or entertainment place was small cafes offering coffee and baked goods (cited by 21% of respondents who desired additional dining/entertainment in the city), followed by entertainment centers/areas in general (17%), a variety of ethnic cuisine restaurants and markets (17%), contemporary casual cuisine (15%), fast food restaurant chains (14%), and upper-scale restaurant chains (11%).”
The poll was administered to 831 people chosen at random between May 1 and May 7 using “a mixed-method design,” according to True North Research, which used email, text, and phone, as well as “multiple data-collection methods,” namely phone and online.
More than 70% of respondents noted they have not had contact with the city in the past 12 months.
“Interaction with staff was most commonly reported by respondents with a child in the household, homeowners, residents between the ages of 30 and 49, female respondents, those who took the survey in English, respondents who reported their ethnicity as other and residents of Saugus,” according to the survey.
A city staffer said the consultant estimated its margin of error for the 18-minute poll was approximately 4%.
