What do you think about polls?
In January, the city of Lafayette asked Godbe Research to do a scientific public opinion poll of 400 people with the purpose to determine whether residents would vote to convert Lafayette from a general law city to a charter city. The results from the poll clearly showed that about half the residents what were polled did not have are a real understanding about what a Charter City is and how it would change the way we do business in Lafayette. For more information, you can go to the city website, www.ci.lafayette.ca.us and review all the findings. But here is what surprised me…
A number of questions were asked about how our community gets their information about the city.
| Newspapers | 72% |
| Word of mouth | 28% |
| City Newsletter (Vistas) | 20% |
| Internet/Website/BLOGs | 8% |
| Community Meetings | 7% |
| City website | 7% |
| City council Meetings | 7% |
| TV Stations | 6% |
| Radio | 3% |
| City Commission Meetings | 3% |
| Other | 8% |
| None of the above | 3% |
It needs to be noted that here in Lafayette we have three local newspapers! Most small cities don’t even have one paper reporting on local news.
They also asked if Social Media was used in their home. 51% of our residents say they don’t use Social Media. That means 49% are using some form of Social Media. Here is what they say they use:
| 31% | |
| You Tube | 19% |
| 5% | |
| 4% | |
| MySpace | 2% |
| Other | 1% |
When we launched our new website this last month, we knew we had to build the social networking tools into our model. We know we have members and visitors that only get their information form sources we were not using. But it is obvious that our community is al little behind the curve. Stay tuned, because this will change.
In order for the chamber to have a “fan” page on facebook, I had to set up a personal account. Well, somewhere back in 2007 I must have set up an account. When I found my way back to my page, I had one (1) friend. Thank you Melissa Mazzoli! Now I have like 90 friends, and I have been found by old employees and old girl friends. The hardest part about facebook is just keeping up with all the messages I receive. By the way, I have no idea what “Mafia Wars” are and I don’t think I want to.
Back to the survey. Here is the “feel good” part of this story…
97% of the survey respondents said they were very (81%) or somewhat (16%) satisfied with the overall quality of life in Lafayette. Pollster Brian Godbe said that, in his 17 years experience running hundreds of polls for cities, he had never seen such a high number. Atherton, at 96% was the previous high satisfaction level he had seen until he came to Lafayette.
Our residents may not know what Charter Cities are or what a Property Transfer Tax is, buy they do know they really like where they live.
