Issaquah survey: Residents rate quality of life high; traffic, housing and planning flagged for improvement

Derek Harvey, project manager for ETC Institute, told the Issaquah City Council on May 13 that 96% of survey respondents rated the city’s overall quality of life as “excellent” or “good.”

The 2025 biennial community survey, administered by ETC Institute, drew 825 statistically valid responses — above the City’s 700-response goal — producing a reported margin of error of about 3.4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. Dale Markey Crimp, assistant to the city administrator, said the administration shortened the survey, added new questions on social connection and loneliness, and will publish an interactive Power BI dashboard of the results for council and the public.

Why it matters: The survey is a regularly used tool for the city’s strategic planning and budget discussions. High overall resident satisfaction (96%) and positive ratings for public safety, parks and fire service contrast with consistent concerns about traffic flow, planning/zoning and housing affordability — issues council members said they plan to raise in the July retreat.

ETC staff described the survey methods and headline results. Derek Harvey said the instrument was distributed by mail, phone and online in March–April and that ETC used the city’s shapefiles to draw a geographically representative random sample. He said the company provides an importance–satisfaction matrix to identify where low satisfaction aligns with high resident importance.

Harvey highlighted three headline findings: strong perceptions of Issaquah as a place to live (96%) and to raise children (91%); stability in most measures since 2023; and flow of traffic, land use/planning and public transportation as the top areas identified for improvement. He identified flow of traffic as the single largest “opportunity for improvement” in the important–satisfaction analysis.

Council members pressed for context and next steps. Councilmember Ray asked for a public link to the Power BI dashboard; Crimp said staff will publish the interactive dashboard and the full report and will use the data in communications and at the July retreat. Councilmember Hall and others urged deeper follow-up: focus groups or targeted outreach to understand what respondents mean by “flow of traffic” and whether concerns reflect near-term construction chokepoints or larger network and land-use patterns.

Several council members also suggested staff compare the statistically valid sample to the separate opt‑in survey responses (146 additional responses) to identify demographic or geographic differences. Crimp said staff will analyze the opt‑in results and cross‑tabulations and make them available before the retreat.

Council reaction and communications: Members expressed broad agreement with presenting the dashboard publicly and exploring focused community engagement to unpack ambiguous responses on planning, traffic and housing. Deputy Council President De Michel and Councilmember Zhang emphasized reading open‑ended comments for local specifics; Zhang suggested adding metrics on housing affordability (percent of units affordable at defined AMI levels) and clearer climate/energy targets to future measurement work.

The administration will: publish the ETC report and interactive dashboard online, share results through the city’s communications channels, and bring survey findings and cross‑tabulations to the council retreat in July for policy and budget discussions. Crimp noted there is no immediate council action requested at this meeting.

Ending: Councilmembers said the high overall satisfaction rating was notable and urged staff to use the survey to target improvements where satisfaction is low and importance is high. The council will revisit the survey results and related performance measures at the July retreat.