In A New Survey And Town Hall Meetings, Nashvillians Have A Chance To Sound Off

A new survey of Nashvillians will provide fodder for a series of town-hall meetings that begin Thursday at Maplewood High School.

Mayor David Briley is bringing together residents with elected officials and department heads for six events in the next month (full list and RSVP here).

The
survey findings clearly show that residents are feeling good about the city as a place to live (80 percent) and 59 percent were satisfied with Metro’s services. But there were concerns.

When asked to rank what needs the most attention, residents put street, sidewalk and infrastructure maintenance at the top — with more than half dissatisfied. Also in need of attention are public transportation and education, participants said.

There’s also concern about the availability of affordable housing, with 72 percent of people unhappy with the availability of housing for low and middle-income families.

High satisfaction 66%+ reported for most categories on Parks, Library, Fire/EMS, Police, and Water.— Brian Kelsey (@civicanalytics)
April 17, 2018

Because the survey was conducted by the ETC Institute, which does work in many cities, that allowed for comparisons beyond Davidson County. For example, Nashvillians are much more satisfied by the parks and library systems here, as well as fire, police and water services, than people in peer cities.

Metro said that the survey accurately represented Davidson County’s gender and racial makeup, but skewed a bit toward older and higher-income residents.

Future surveys would try to correct for that sampling, and routine follow-ups are expected.