Tamarac Blows $27K on Survey That Tells Residents What They Already Knew

by Sharon Aron Baron October 14, 2013

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By: Sharon Aron Baron

The results are in for the “City of Tamarac Citizens Survey” because listening to residents’ concerns isn’t enough for the city. No, they had to hire a Kansas company, ETC Institute, to perform a survey to see how you really feel.

The city hires the ETC Institute of Olathe, Kansas, every two years to perform a survey. This year they surveyed a random sample of 623 residents at a taxpayer cost of $27,650 to tell us what we already knew:

We’re concerned with our safety.
Getting a permit in Tamarac is like pulling teeth
Code enforcement stinks.

The residents could have told city officials this and saved the money.

No, ETC was hired to do a fancy survey – a legitimate survey, which included polling city employees to make sure that the city manager was doing a swell job and everyone was getting those recognition awards.

What’s baffling about the survey is that ETC pits Tamarac against mysterious cities in Florida and the rest of the country for comparison. Amazingly, Tamarac comes out miles ahead of these cities as if Tamarac is the best place in the country to live.

Where are these other places? This is never disclosed in the survey. I wrote to ETC and am waiting for an answer. Of course, for them to make a comparison, it has to be cities that have contracted them to do a survey this year.

I’m certain that Tamarac must have been up against these Florida cities: Opa Locka, Lauderdale Lakes, Belle Glade, and Pembroke Park. In the U.S., our competition was more than likely: Camden NJ, Detroit, MI, and Stockton, CA.

Tamarac Talk did our own survey for the price of $0, and the results were totally unscientific. See Survey Here

These surveys are expensive, useless, and are just a mechanism to reassure our past and present city managers. Our mayor and city commissioners may have $27K jingling in their pockets to pay for such assurances, but our middle-class city, with one of the highest tax rates in Broward County, does not.

The point is, let’s nix this waste of money in the future and listen to our voters. They’ll tell you what their concerns are for a lot less than $27,000.

Below are some snippets from the survey:

Why do the very satisfied people surveyed live west and the dissatisfied live out in the east?

Safety is a big concern in Tamarac. Unfortunately, our Vice Mayor confused “crime safety” with “traffic safety” to justify voting yes on red-light cameras in 2012.

According to the survey, we’re just not happy with the visibility of BSO’s presence on our streets. However, here we are compared to other cities in Florida and the United States, and we have no idea who ETC Institute is using on this survey.

Code enforcement and the building permitting and inspection process need to be improved according to this poll. But most of us already knew that.

Survey results are high according to residents’ perceptions of the city. According to the ETC Institute, those mysterious cities in Florida and the rest of the United States are as well.

Author Profile

Sharon Aron Baron

Sharon Aron Baron is the Editor of Tamarac Talk, Coral Springs Talk, Margate Talk, Coconut Creek Talk and Parkland Talk. Tamarac Talk was created in 2011 to provide News for the residents of Tamarac and is the #1 News Source for Residents.