San Mateo council reviews 2025 community survey; residents urge more bike lanes, affordable housing remains priority

SAN MATEO — At a March 3 special meeting, the San Mateo City Council received an informational briefing on the City’s 2025 community survey, which was conducted in February by True North Research and completed with 750 interviews (margin of error ±3.6 percentage points at the 95% confidence level).

Assistant City Manager Christina Horzberger introduced the study and said the survey “along with some of our other outreach efforts … are gonna be informative to that strategic planning process,” pointing to a strategic planning workshop set for March 14 at the MLK Center.

Dr. Timothy McClarny, president of True North Research, presented the methodology and key results. “We wound up completing 750 interviews as part of this study, which because it’s a random sample, allows us to estimate the opinions of all adults in the city … and that is plus or minus 3.6% at the 95% confidence level,” he said. Interviewing used stratified random sampling of residential properties, with recruitment by email, text and telephone and survey completion available in English and Spanish.

Key findings

- Overall quality of life: 84% of respondents rated San Mateo’s quality of life as excellent or good. - Overall satisfaction with city services: 71% said they were satisfied with the city’s efforts to provide municipal services; 17% were dissatisfied and 12% were unsure or declined to answer. These results were statistically similar to 2022. - Top-rated services: library services, fire/EMS and…