Those who work in the public sector are often times lightning rods for criticism, whether that criticism is deserved or not.
The first-ever Citizen Satisfaction Survey in the Municipality of North Cowichan has yielded positive results, as 97 percent of respondents rated the overall quality of life in the municipality as good or very good.
Eighty-nine percent of respondents are satisfied with the overall quality of service and North Cowichan Mayor Al Siebring said there were some specific issues people wanted to see addresses and water quality was at the top of that list.
“There were some specific areas in the survey where people had concerns, where people said ‘we want you to focus on this,’ one of them was water quality: water quality in that context, not being drinking water, but being things like fixing Quamichan Lake, dealing with some of the problems at the beach in Maple Bay, those sorts of things,” said Siebring.
Homelessness and drug addiction was also a hot button issue.
Siebring said the results of the survey are encouraging moving forward.
“People truly believe they are getting good value for what they’re paying, so overall it was a very encouraging result for us as a council and for me, as someone who has sat at the table for ten years,” said Siebring. “Sometimes you wonder, ‘are we doing the right thing with this stuff?'”
“There seems to be good buy-in,” said Siebring.
NRG National Research Group conducted the survey of four hundred random households and four out of five residents feel they’re getting good value for their tax dollars.
