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Polco survey: Eden Prairie residents rate city services and safety highly
Summary
A Polco quality-of-life survey presented to the Eden Prairie City Council found strong resident satisfaction with city services, high safety ratings, heavy use of parks and recreation, and areas for improvement including shopping/dining and traffic.
Michelle Kobayashi, a research strategist with Polco (National Research Center), told the Eden Prairie City Council on April 15 that a statistically weighted resident survey shows strong satisfaction with the city’s services and quality of life.
The survey combined a probability sample (2,500 mailed invitations; 483 responses, about a 20% response rate) and an open participation sample (842 responses) for a total of 1,325 responses. Polco said the weighted dataset yields a 95% confidence interval of plus or minus 3 percentage points and that year-to-year changes must exceed roughly 4 percentage points to be statistically significant.
Polco’s presentation framed five key findings: Eden Prairie remains a highly desirable place to live; residents praise the quality and value of city services; residents report positive interactions with city employees; the natural environment (parks, trails, open space) is a top asset; and many residents want more shopping, dining and entertainment options. Kobayashi said roughly nine in 10 respondents rated overall quality of life as “excellent” or “good,” and about 80% plan to remain in Eden Prairie for the next five years.
The survey’s service-score highlights: fire services (about 97% positive), emergency medical services (95%), police (94%), and crime prevention (89%). Kobayashi said Eden Prairie’s safety and police-related ratings exceed Polco’s national, regional and Minnesota benchmarks in many categories; in Polco’s benchmark comparisons Eden Prairie scored higher than the national benchmark on 46 of 66 comparable items and was on par with the nation on the remaining 20. Against regional and state benchmarks, Kobayashi said Eden Prairie exceeded the regional benchmark on 31 items and the state benchmark on 22 items.
Kobayashi discussed areas with lower relative ratings and slight downward trends, notably city planning and assessment services. She cautioned that those services are difficult to score highly in any community, even where results remain above national benchmarks. On resident priorities for improvement, about 13% of respondents named traffic (congestion, signal timing, speeding) and about 11% named taxes/cost of living; roughly 30% of open-ended answers referenced parks, trails and recreation as the community’s best features.
City Manager Rick Getchell and several council members praised the results during the meeting. Council member P.J. Narayan said the data confirm the council’s strategic priorities and credited staff for implementation. Kobayashi said the full report and appendices will be published on the city website and contain item-level data and verbatim open-ended responses.
The presentation included methodology details: probability-based sampling conducted Dec. 2 through Jan. 27, statistical weighting to reflect Eden Prairie population demographics, and Polco’s benchmarking database drawn from more than 500 communities. Kobayashi noted the survey’s value to strategic planning, budgeting and public engagement.
Council discussion after the presentation focused on using the results to inform budgeting and priorities; Narayan and other members asked staff to highlight follow-up steps for council and to encourage residents to review the full report online.
Kobayashi concluded by offering to answer questions and by noting Polco’s experience running resident surveys for several decades.
