THUNDER BAY – Changes to the City of Thunder Bay’s citizen satisfaction survey will allow residents to weigh in more regularly on local issues, and provide decision-makers with “real-time” public opinion data.
The city will ditch an Ipsos-led phone survey that gauged residents on topics including quality of life, city services, important issues facing the community, and experiences of racism and discrimination.
Zencity, an Israel-based analytics company, will instead provide what the city called “targeted continuous monitoring of residents’ opinions and satisfaction levels” through online surveying.
The new survey will run from August to September, before resuming in January 2024 for a three-month period, and once again in July 2024.
City manager Norm Gale said that rolling process will bring benefits for municipal decision-making.
“We’ll be able to at any time go into the website… and look for trends – is there anything emerging, is something changing, is something more important, less important?” he said. “When we analyze that, if we say, this is something council needs to know about, or perhaps this is something council can do something about… we’ll bring a report. So we’ll be more flexible, more nimble, and more proactive when it comes to citizen satisfaction.”
The survey will be digitally distributed via targeted ads in an effort to reach a representative sample of residents, based on Thunder Bay’s census data.
The city encourages residents who see a Zencity survey appear on their social media channels or web browser to complete it.
The Zencity survey replaces the City’s previous citizen satisfaction surveys conducted by telephone through Ipsos.
Last year’s survey results showed residents’ perceived quality of life continuing to decline, part of a years-long trend.
On the other hand, the results showed strong satisfaction with many city services.
Gale said the new version of the survey will ask similar questions that will allow continued monitoring of those trends.
Those not targeted to complete a survey can still provide feedback through the city’s website. Those answers will not be included in Zencity results that will be considered statistically valid, but will be presented to city council.
The satisfaction survey has been held every two years since 2009, with the exception of the one-year pandemic delay in 2021.
Gale called it a tool that has helped city leaders understand community sentiments and in some cases, driven decisions.
“I can say that absolutely, we invest time in this, we review the results of these surveys, and they do inform our reports and recommendations to council – and indeed, council’s decisions,” he said. “This stuff does matter.”
