Laguna Beach surveying residents to help shape future

A survey is being circulated for those who call Laguna Beach their home, with residents asked to give input that could help guide priorities for the coastal community’s future .

“We’re very excited to be conducting this resident survey,” Laguna Beach Mayor Sue Kempf said in a prepared statement Tuesday. “We will use the information collected from the survey at the City Council Strategic Planning Session in February to help incorporate community feedback into goals set for the next five years.”

The survey can be accessed at polco.us/lagunabeach and is open through Jan. 10. An email address and ZIP Code are required to participate, but respondents will remain anonymous.

The 31 questions — many broken into multiple parts — take an estimated 15 to 20 minutes to answer. The multiple-choice survey asks residents to tell city officials what they think the important issues are in Laguna Beach and state their level of support for initiatives such as the city taking over Coast Highway and Laguna Canyon Road from Caltrans, the creation of a master parking plan and the addition of another community swimming pool.

Residents are also asked if they would recommend Laguna Beach as a place to live and whether it is suitable for people in all stages of life, including senior citizens and parents of young children. Residents also are given the opportunity to express their satisfaction level with the education system and city government.

Quality-of-life issues brought up in the survey include matters such as public transport and traffic flow for motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians.

When discussion took place regarding the survey at the Laguna Beach City Council meeting on Oct. 19, Jeremy Frimond, a senior management analyst for the city, said it was important that residents share which neighborhoods they live in because doing so would help to hyper-localize some community issues.

“Personally, I think that this is an important component because I think what we’ll be able to do with the data set is really process it down to a micro level to see if we have trends within different neighborhoods within the community,” Frimond said at the meeting. “I’m personally excited to see what the data is going to look like when we actually parse it down to that level.”

A Likert scale, or point system, is used to look at the positions of residents on a wide array of issues. During the same meeting, Councilwoman Toni Iseman asked if people would be able to rate their frustrations, citing subjects such as traffic, noise, parking and rent. She argued that doing so would, in effect, give the council its marching orders.

“Those are captured there, and they will be provided to you in a format that I believe will assist you in understanding the level of community frustration in these areas,” Frimond said. “While it’s not going to be necessarily arranged in a ‘please rank what you dislike the most,’ or ‘what you dislike,’ it’s not going to be arranged that way, in part to avoid leading, but we will arrive at that data set to inform you.”

Residents are also asked about their engagement with the community and their participation in the democratic process. The survey asks whether residents have followed public meetings or contacted city officials within the past year.

Additionally, respondents will be able to rate the performance of a multitude of city services including fire, police, public works and recreation services, as well as the city’s own effectiveness in reaching its residents.

“We want to really gauge the community’s satisfaction with city services and then also be able to understand what the community’s priority projects, programs or policies are, and then we’re going to provide the results of it to the City Council,” City Manager Shohreh Dupuis said in a phone interview Monday.

“As they meet and confer to establish their goals for the next five years, they can use the results of the survey and incorporate whatever they like into the priorities.”

The survey will allow the city to learn more about its residents, as respondents are asked to disclose their race, whether they are a renter or property owner, their monthly housing expense, whether they have children or seniors living under their roof, and their projected household income for the year ahead.

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