SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – Residents recently had the opportunity to rate the City of South Lake Tahoe on numerous categories focused on livability in the city.

While the city’s highest scoring category is the overall quality of the natural environment with 92% of survey participants rating it excellent or good, only 23% rated the overall economic health as excellent or good, scoring lowest of all categories.

A survey conducted by Polco, called the National Community Survey and distributed to residents earlier this year, assessed these categories among others for a total of 10 assessed community livability facets, shown below along with their scoring:

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• Community design (36%)
• Economy (23%)
• Mobility (49%)
• Utilities (49%)
• Safety (78%)
• Parks and recreation (82%)
• Inclusivity and engagement (42%)
• Natural environment (92%)
• Education, arts and cultures (48%)
• Health and wellness (63%)

Polco has surveyed over 500 other communities across the nation since 1994, providing data to compare South Lake Tahoe to national benchmarks.

Three of these 10 categories—natural environment, parks and recreations, and safety—ranked higher than the national benchmarks.

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Four ranked lower, education, arts and cultures, as well as inclusivity and engagement, community design, and finally, economic health.

The other categories were similar or on par with national comparisons.

The survey also had residents rank these categories on importance. From those ratings, Polco calculated each category’s discrepancy or gap between importance and quality.

“We can identify here that the most significant discrepancy between quality and importance,” Brandon Barnett, Polco Senior Survey Associate said while presenting results at city council on Aug. 13, “is in economy.”

Although scoring the lowest in terms of quality in South Lake Tahoe, economy scored second highest in terms of importance, right behind the natural environment.

The smallest gap between quality and importance was found with the natural environment category.

“This indicates to us as survey researchers,” Barnett explained, “that needs are currently being met, but that the issue of the national environment nevertheless is a top priority for the community.”

Following natural environment and economic health, each with 90% of survey takers scoring them as essential or very important, the other facets scored in terms of importance in the following order:

• Mobility (83%)
• Parks and recreation (82%)
• Utilities (79%)
• Health and wellness (77%)
• Safety (72%)
• Community design (70%)
• Education, culture, and arts (66%)
• Inclusivity and engagement (65%)

Other categories with relatively large gaps between assessed quality and importance are mobility, utility, and community design.

On the other end of the spectrum, those with the smallest discrepancies, in addition to the natural environment, are parks and recreation, and safety.

The survey asked questions on affordability of different subjects over many of these 10 facets and found that affordability in general is a concern for the city. Only 3% of participants ranked availability of affordable quality housing as excellent or good, 8% on cost of living in South Lake Tahoe, 25% on availability of affordable quality childcare/preschool and 32% on availability of quality food.

The survey also revealed below national benchmarks on traffic and street services.

These results came from the survey that was sent to 3,000 random South Lake Tahoe postal service addresses between Feb. 28 and April 16., and the 323 households that completed it (13%). Polco weighted the responses according to the demographic profile of South Lake Tahoe.

The survey was also publicized online, with 320 participating. Results from this survey were similar to the randomized survey but had slightly less favorable ratings across the city’s quality of service questions.

In addition to national benchmark data comparisons, the survey also compared South Lake Tahoe to California and resort cities for customized benchmarks. Those comparisons revealed more on par or similar ratings and fewer higher and lower ratings across the livability categories.

Best practices advise conducting this study every two years. All councilmembers present at the Aug. 13 city council meeting expressed interest in that frequency. Prior to this survey, the most recent survey of this type occurred in 2013.

Doing the survey more frequently can allow the city to track changes in resident sentiment on different issues.

The city plans on using the data for the city’s strategic planning as well as strategic plan performance indicators.

Assistant City Manager, Hilary Roverud, used housing as an example for survey data use. “We are in the midst of implementing quite a few different housing projects and programs that city staff has been working to put in a position to make a difference in that area,” she said and added, “So it would be useful information to be able to see if we do this survey again in two years, whether those efforts are having any effect on responses to that particular question.”

Key findings were presented at the Aug. 13 city council meeting. Comprehensive survey results, including questions asked under each category, are available on the city’s website under the City Manager page.