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City survey: La Porte rates high on public safety and parks; residents flag traffic and code enforcement as priorities
Summary
An ETC Institute survey of 434 residents shows strong satisfaction with fire, EMS and parks; residents ranked traffic flow and cleanup of junk/dilapidated structures as top priorities. The city’s ratings exceed state and national averages in most categories.
A consultant presenting results of the 2024 La Porte community survey told the City Council that residents reported high satisfaction with public safety, parks and customer service while identifying traffic flow, maintenance of streets and code enforcement as top priorities for improvement.
Robert Heacock of the ETC Institute reported that the city exceeded its response goal — "We actually exceeded that goal with 434 completed surveys," he said — yielding a 95 percent confidence level with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.6 percent. Heacock told the council the sample was well distributed across demographic groups and comparable to the city's 2022 survey.
Key findings presented included very high satisfaction with fire services and EMS and that roughly three‑quarters of respondents had visited a La Porte park or recreation facility in the past 12 months. Heacock said 61 percent of respondents use the city's Facebook page for information, 50 percent use the city website and 46 percent use the city calendar.
Areas of resident concern highlighted in the presentation included traffic congestion and code enforcement. Heacock noted nearly 29 percent dissatisfaction with "the overall flow of traffic and congestion management" and said code enforcement complaints clustered around cleanup of junk and debris, demolition of dilapidated structures and mowing/weed enforcement. On curbside recycling, Heacock reported that 63 percent of respondents said they would not be willing to pay a fee for city curbside recycling.
When comparing 2024 responses to 2022, Heacock said the city saw an 8 percent increase in residents who think the city is moving in the right direction. He also reported declines in some categories since 2022, including quality of drinking water, maintenance of city streets and sidewalks, and congestion management (a 9 percent decrease in satisfaction), and some small decreases in perceptions of safety and park amenities.
Heacock also presented benchmarking results: La Porte rated above national averages in 50 of 59 assessed categories and above Texas averages in 52 of 59 categories, with particularly strong ratings for emergency preparedness, heavy trash collection, effectiveness of communication and customer service.
The presentation closed with the consultant inviting council questions; no public questions were recorded following the presentation.
