I’m going to write a five part blog series this week (yes, I know that means writing something everyday) about the 2006 Eden Prairie Quality of Life Study. The 2006 Quality of Life Study, or as I’ll refer to it from here on out as the 2006 QLS, was initiated as part of the City’s 2008-2009 budget preparation process. The idea behind the 2006 QLS was to ask citizens what they liked and didn’t like about city services, programs and operations, and then to incorporate that information into the staff’s budget preparation process and the Council’s decision-making process for the City’s 2008-2009 City Budget, which is underway as we speak.
The 2006 QLS was conducted by the Twin Cities public opinion research firm Decision Resources Ltd. Decision Resources is a widely known and respected consulting firm in Minnesota. They do many similar studies for cities around the state. They are particularly strong in the Twin Cities market. I think they were a good choice to do our QLS for two reasons. One, they are recognized experts in public sector research. And two, because they are so dominant in the Twin Cities market they can offer us many comparisons of how our data compares to other comparable Twin Cities communities.
The QLS was started in 2006. That’s why I call it the 2006 QLS despite the fact that its final report was delivered by the consultant just last week during the Council’s 2007 long term planning session. The QLS was drawn from a statistically representative sample of Eden Prairie households and conducted by telephone from December 2006-January 2007. The data is reliable to + or – 5%.
For today, I’ll be brief. I’ll let the data speak for itself the rest of the week. When Bill Morris, President of Decision Resources, presented his final report to the City Council last week he told us that he always likes to leave his clients with a couple of summary sound-bites that properly describe the collective public opinion of the population being studied. He gave us two such comments to describe the data and the comments generated by Eden Prairie’s 2006 QLS:
“Fiscally Conservative Greens“; and,
“Affordable Excellence“.
So what does it mean to be a “fiscally conservative green”? Morris said that it means Eden Prairie residents are, generally, fiscally conservative in most political matters, but when it comes to the environment, particularly their immediate natural environment, they trend a solidly more to the center. Citizens expressed strong support for parks, open spaces, environmental initiatives energy efficiency programs, etc. They want their city government to be a good environmental steward because it’s prudent and wise to take care of a limited (and valuable) natural resource: Eden Prairie’s land, lakes and natural environment.
And “affordable excellence”? What does that mean? Let me first tell you what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean “I want something for nothing” or that “I want my cake, but I want to eat it too”. It doesn’t mean that Eden Prairie want excellent services, but don’t want to pay their taxes. According to Morris, most Eden Prairie residents make the connection between their tax bill and the quality of life around them. They understand that quality comes at a price, especially the maintenance of that quality. But many of our residents come from the business world where there are market pressures to make continuous improvements to quality. They want their city government to do that too. Morris said the data on clearly shows that Eden Prairie residents will not accept significant decreases in city service levels, but they won’t accept significant increases in taxes either. I think that sums up our 2008-2009 budget challenge pretty well right there.
Tomorrow: What citizens like, don’t like, and how much.
