City Services Satisfaction Survey 2013 City Services Satisfaction Survey | Page 7

Ratings And Perceptions Of Specific Services And Facilities
Most city services in Arlington continue to receive moderately high to high
overall ratings.
About two-thirds of city services rated receive a top-two-box rating (“good” or
“excellent”) of 70% or higher.
Fire services, library services/facilities, parks and recreation, and water utilities
services continue to be rated very high, with most top-two-box ratings above 85%.
On the opposite end, city services with less than 60% top-two-box ratings are zoning
service, building permits, code enforcement and code compliance.
Although quality and timeliness ratings of ambulance/emergency medical services
are still high (77%, 79% “good” or “excellent,” respectively), it is worth noting that
both the ratings have significantly declined compared to last year. Also, quality of
customer service in code compliance significantly went down from 78% top-two box
to 56%. However, these declines can be somewhat attributed to small base sizes
and/or a question change made this year, as described in detail for each service in
the following pages.
Below is a summary of each city service.
Fire Department.
Consistent with last year, virtually all of the users rate the fire
department as “excellent” or “good” on quality of service and on timeliness of service.
Top-two-box rating of community education services by the fire department (79%) is
comparatively lower than ratings of the fire services above (90%+), but still viewed
positively among citizens.
Ambulance/Emergency Medical Services.
Among users in the past 12 months,
ambulance and emergency medical services continue to be rated high (75%+ top-two
box) on quality of service and timeliness of service. However, compared to last year,
both the ratings have declined significantly*, and indicate need for improvement.
(*Note: This decline could be driven by data volatility due to small base sizes, n=59 in
2012 and n=45 in 2011. When looking at perceptions of ambulance/emergency medical
services among 300 or more citizens, regardless of their past use of the services,
ratings have been steadily high at 92% in 2012 and 94% in 2011. This indicates some
degree of sample size impact, although past-year users’ experiences and perceptions
may be real based on their actual incidences.)
Decision Analyst, Inc.
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