Issaquah citizens are happy, but they may also be more isolated than the average American.
A National Citizen Survey conducted by the National Research Center in December in cooperation with nearly 300 Issaquah households found that those surveyed were highly satisfied with their quality of life.
Ninety-one percent of respondents rated their quality of life as “good” or “excellent,” with the remaining 9 percent rating their experience as “fair.” Opinions of nearly all factors — including safety, mobility, the economy and education, among others — were similar to national benchmarks, with respondents’ opinions of their natural environment exceeding national averages.
In their line of questioning, surveyors broke down each category into specific questions, taking note of the percentage of satisfied respondents and how those satisfaction rates compare to other U.S. cities where the survey’s been conducted.
“This is a very in-tune statistic for communities,” Deputy City Administrator Emily Moon said.
So while only a third of respondents were satisfied with factors like Issaquah’s cost of living or availability of affordable housing, those satisfaction rates were similar to those found in other U.S. cities.
The one notable black mark on opinions of the community were directed toward traffic flow.
“I’m not surprised by any of this info,” city councillor Joshua Schaer said. Schaer said he was particularly unsurprised by dissatisfaction with local traffic and hoped the low score would warrant immediate response from the city.
He likened the situation to the regular citizen polls in the popular computer game Sim City.
“Boy, when that percentage number got low that was the time to start fixing that area of your city,” he said.
Citizen participation in local government and the community received low marks on several metrics, even compared against other American cities.
While nine out of 10 respondents said they planned to remain in Issaquah and 94 percent said they would recommend Issaquah to others, only 31 percent had ever contacted a city employee.
Of the “community engagement” metrics that scored lower than national averages: 19 percent of respondents participated in a club, 14 percent had watched a public meeting, 28 percent participated in religious or spiritual services and 69 percent had done a favor for a neighbor.
The National Research Center contacted 1,200 randomly selected Issaquah households and received a 24 percent response rate, in line with average participation rates according to the Center.
The Issaquah city council will discuss possible courses of action to take on the survey results at its regularly scheduled work session March 9.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified one of the quality of life benchmarks in the sixth paragraph. It has been replaced with the correct benchmark, availability of affordable housing.
