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Central Saanich residents mostly satisfied

Satisfaction survey mirrors results from a decade ago.

The District of Central Saanich is doing well, if the results of its recent customer satisfaction survey are any indication.

Council on Monday discussed the survey results, presented by Vice-President Tim Chan and Research Consultant Kim Scott of NRG Research Group.

Primarily conducted via phone interviews, a total of 444 households in the District were included in the final results. Other surveys were conducted online.

A point that stood out for Mayor Ryan Windsor was the satisfaction for police services which saw 82 per cent of survey respondents satisfied, which he said shows a good level of service and content.

The overall quality of life in Central Saanich saw 57 per cent of the respondents say it was very good; 40 per cent said it was good, and; two per cent said it was poor.

The survey indicated that 98 per cent of respondents felt the overall quality of life is good — a similar result to a survey that was conducted a decade ago.

“I think that people are prepared to make the investments in the community,” said Windsor.

In terms of planning for the future, residents expressed a wide variety of reactions when it came to increasing the infill or density of residential development overall in the District.

One third (34 per cent) would support increasing infill or population density, and the same proportion (34 per cent) would oppose increasing it.

Another 29 per cent neither support nor oppose the potential increase.

Windsor said the results showed a clear split on what they referred to as infill and densification, adding that councillor Bob Thompson has pointed out in the past that they as the District need to do a better job explaining that.

“I think when you have nearly a third of people in that category, there weren’t too many cases where you had that large of a segment of the respondents in the neutral or not able to respond category,” he said.

When residents were asked to name the single most important issue facing the District, around one quarter (26 per cent) mentioned the issue related to population density and housing including comments on development, population density and affordable housing.

Windsor said the data was relatively consistent with some of the questions similar and different than in the past (10 years ago).

“We saw a slight decline in certain categories and I think a lot of it boils down to communication, how we’re communicating,” he said.

He pointed out that 10 years ago when they did the survey, the District’s website was three to four years old in terms of the design, template and the way the information was delivered.

“That same website now is 14 or 15 years old ... so its concerning for me the way we deliver information to people hasn’t been updated.”

He added that a fair number of respondents had indicated that the website is one avenue for them to get information, the municipality’s newsletters being another one.

“I think that we’ve relied on a newsletter format for a long time and there may be ways that we can refresh the mail document.”

The full survey results are on the District’s website under the March 14 Committee of The Whole Meeting link.