Survey Reports High Marks for Dakota County

Editor's Note: Dakota County Commissioner Tom Egan represents Mendota Heights, Lilydale, Mendota and a portion of Eagan. He was elected to office in 2004 and is now serving his second four-year term. Egan will write regularly to Patch readers about county government. In this column, Egan reports on the results of a survey conducted earlier in the year polling Dakota County residents.

Communication and collaboration are vitally important to the Dakota County Board so that we can more efficiently and effectively represent the interests of the residents of Dakota County.

To that end, the Dakota County Board and staff  met jointly last month with the Scott County Board and staff. As I have , earlier this year, Dakota County collaborated with Scott and St. Louis counties to conduct a residential survey. The purpose of this survey was to learn more about how the public rates the quality of life, service delivery and satisfaction with local government in our three counties.  

As a cost savings measure, Tom Miller of the National Research Center, which conducted the survey, presented a summary of the results for Dakota and Scott counties together.

While Dakota and Scott counties demographically share much in common and both can take satisfaction from receiving high rankings in most categories, Dakota County can take particularly high pride from most responses to this survey. For example, on a 100 point scale, 64 percent ranked the quality of life in Dakota County as "good" and 29 percent as "excellent" for a total of 93 percent, with only six percent ranking it "fair" and one percent "poor."

Scott County ranked well, but not that well.

Nearly twice as many Dakota County residents ranked "Location" as being what they liked best (31 percent) about the county as Scott County (16 percent).

 In terms of the county's overall image, Dakota County received on a 100-point scale a vote of 67 percent (considerably above average for those entities responding to that question).  Scott County received a vote of 58 percent.

In terms of potential problems in the county, Dakota County respondents felt that foreclosed properties, taxes and traffic congestion are their greatest concerns.

 Residents in both Dakota and Scott County feel safe in most categories. For example on a 100-point scale, both counties received a score of 80 percent regarding safety from violent crimes.

Concerning the performance of the County Board itself, Dakota County respondents strongly approved (16 percent) or somewhat approved (70 percent) of the performance of their Board while the Scott County respondents strongly approved (six percent) or somewhat approved (68 percent) of the performance of their Board.

In terms of the overall quality of county services, Dakota County respondents gave the County ratings of excellent (16 percent) and good (65 percent); Scott County respondents gave the County ratings of excellent (seven percent) and good (55 percent).

There were many other questions pertaining to how the county deals with areas such as communication, property taxes and the budget.

This is the first year the survey was mailed instead of done by telephone as we have done in the past. Tom Miller of the National Research Center indicated that he believes a mailed survey should be more candid and accurate than a telephone survey. The Dakota County Board will treat the responses to this survey very seriously. These responses will be carefully considered as we set our budget as well as our goals and objectives for the upcoming year.