To the editor:
I received a citizen survey that Douglas Schulze, city manager, told me was used by the city to rate its quality of service and help shape the future of the city.
The survey was supposed to be anonymous yet I was contacted three times to return it. A citizen survey; non-citizens probably should not bother to reply?
The first 142 questions ask you to rate Excellent to Poor or Don’t Know.
Most of the questions are about how good do you feel about quality of life, enjoyment, health and wellness on Bainbridge.
Four questions in different sections ask how safe do you feel at your house and walking in the downtown area, or were you a victim of a crime. The questionnaire was prepared by a company in New Jersey in a high crime area with recent racial confrontations.
Rate the built-up sidewalks, trails you use for fitness. If you live outside the downtown city in open areas, you walk, run, bicycle, along the local streets vs. the 100 percent built sidewalks in the downtown.
There is no space on the survey to add child carriages and humans walk on a 25 degree slope on the side of Valley Road. Millions of dollars were spent on a ferry to Olympics trail. Only a pedestrian sign was installed on Valley Road. People and dogs need to climb into the ditch when a car goes by on Day Road. No place to enter your real feedback that differs where you live on the island.
Sixteen questions collect information about your age, monthly income, monthly housing costs, your race, are you Hispanic or Latino, type of building you live in, are you employed. This data, for some reason must be needed by the city to rate its services, or to sell its data to other companies.
The Bainbridge Island 98110 in October 2017 printed that 97 percent of the respondents checked Bainbridge was a good place to live. Only 46 percent said it was a good place to live and work. Confidence in city government was 35 percent and only 49 percent responded that it was acting in the best interest of Bainbridge jobs, affordable housing, land and street development used by its citizens.
The city government must be acting on the information it collects in this survey; the results have not changed much in the past few years.
For the $8,500 I was told the city spends each year on the survey, the money would be better spent on collecting relevant data it could use to better manage and govern with.
EDWIN RYMARZ
Bainbridge Island
