Park Spending Last, Police 1st in Voter Survey

San Diego County voters rank police first and open space last when asked which of seven public services they would open their pocketbooks for, a new survey shows.

That wasn’t the answer that a parks agency was looking for.

The survey had been commissioned to determine how to finance open-space acquisition, specifically a proposed 42-mile-long linear park stretching along the San Dieguito River Valley from Del Mar to near Julian.

The park’s joint powers authority is scheduled to review the survey results today, perhaps to pull out the few positive facts that surfaced, then turn over the task of coming up with a financing method to acquire about 5,400 acres of private land for the park.

More than 77% of the voters questioned in the survey responded that they were willing to pay more to get more police officers. Only 35.5% would shell out more of their money to purchase open space.

More than half of voters surveyed were willing to pay more for more jails (63.8%), for new roads and highways (59.7%), for public transit (59.9%), for water and sewer improvements (59.7%), for parks (58.1%), but not for open space.

The further the survey ventured, the worse the results it elicited for the policy-makers attempting to find ways to finance the San Dieguito River Regional Open Space Park. Decision Research, the San Diego-based firm that conducted the voter poll, put it tactfully:

“Combined with the general lack of enthusiasm for open space and parkland acquisition compared to other government services and facilities, we are cautious about the prospects for success of open-space acquisition measures.”

Decision Research polled 1,600 residents who voted in the 1988 general election or who have since registered to vote. The poll was conducted from Oct. 18 through Nov. 4.

The results showed that voters, by a two-to-one margin, preferred more smaller community parks to fewer large regional parks. Most voters believe that developers should pay for both regional and local parks.

When asked what they wanted in a park, the interviewees favored educational nature trails, hiking trails, bicycling trails and horse-riding trails in that order. Interestingly, those with the lowest incomes ($15,000 or less) were most likely to say that horse trails are very important.

Without tipping their hand as to the real purpose of their survey, interviewers asked voters to rate potential sites for an open space park. The answers gave San Dieguito River Valley Open Space Park advocates one of their few lifts. The San Dieguito River Valley, coastal portions and inland portions, ranked above the other choices, El Capitan Reservoir, San Luis Rey River, Santa Margarita River, Otay River Valley and Tijuana River Valley.