Craig Daily Press

Craig — Results from a recent city-commissioned resident survey are in, but there aren’t as many mandates to officials as a steady range of priorities.

The city hired Natio­nal Re­­search Center Inc. to conduct its National Cit­izen Survey — a uniform survey used to poll residents across the country — late last year.

Within the responses city officials received, some things are clear. For one, drugs are considered a big problem, along with unattractive property inside city limits. But people mostly feel safe in town and in their neighborhoods.

For another, residents are torn about growth, happy with certain aspects and wary of others.

Respondents provided an­­swers on a ranged scale. For instance, in the question about the overall quality of life in Craig, answers ranged from excellent to poor.

The Research Center then averaged all the answers on a 100-point scale, with 100 being excellent and zero being poor.

For quality of life in Craig, respondents gave the city an average answer of 54 out of 100. Even with confusing responses, the city can make use of the survey, City Manager Jim Ferree said.

“I think you have to do these surveys over a number of years to see if there’s impact in these areas,” he said. “We could do another one in 2009, and I think we should, particularly when the community seems to be changing so much.”

Change is an area that seemed to split the community, according to the survey.

Between seven and eight times as many respondents said retail and job growth happened too slowly in Craig. On the other hand, about twice as many answered Craig’s population growth happened too fast as compared with too slowly.

It’s a muddled picture where residents want more shopping and job opportunities, but don’t want the influx of new residents that accompanies — and sometimes facilitates — growing opportunity.

The city will continue to facilitate development responsibly, Ferree said.

“We have to have population growth in order to be attractive to additional employers,” he said. “We can’t stop residential development. We can, but not without really squeezing the housing market.”

Which ties into a big concern reported within the survey: affordability.

Access to affordable housing, child care and health care all ranked low, with affordable food coming in the middle.

“If you don’t provide for additional residential development, you really create a squeeze on the housing market,” Ferree said. “We have to accommodate development in order to balance supply and demand and control cost.”

Drug problems were one area in large agreement among survey respondents, with 71 percent rating it a “major” issue.

The city is happy to hear those comments — along with majority positive support for parks and recreational opportunities as well as beautification projects — because it lets the council know what issues are community priorities, Ferree said.

“I think it reinforces our goals of trying to clean up the community,” he said. “We’ve expanded the Police Department to try and take care of this drug problem. That tells us the importance of (the All Crimes Enforcement Team), that we need to continue funding those programs, continue in (building) code enforcement and community beautification.

“And we should be focusing — particularly with this new residential growth — we should be focusing on new parks.”

The survey cost $8,900 and is a uniform survey used by many cities and towns across the country, Ferree added. With this, the city will be able to compare its residents’ responses with those in other places.

Craig residents provided a 30 percent response rate out of 1,200 mailings, which is average, said Damema Mann, National Citizen Survey associate director.

The margin of error for any answer is 5 percent, she said.

Craig respondents mirrored many other cities in that women and senior residents responded in greater numbers than men or younger people. To counteract that, answers were weighted to reflect Craig’s true demographics as in the 2000 U.S. Census.

“We do it so we can most accurately reflect the community as a whole,” Mann said. “We never do it so the weights are too high.”