Monday, November 30, 2009
by Susie Pender
The first NewCastleNOW.org community survey is over. It ran for ten days, from Friday, November 20 through Sunday, November 29 at 6:00 p.m. 526 participants responded to the four questions in the survey; 230 left comments as well. Click HERE to view a bar graph of the results in a new window.
Click here to view a bar graph of the results in a new window
As responses to question number one, whether to have one or two garbage pick-ups per week, began to be posted, initially there was a slight preference for one pick-up. However, the responses drew even midway through the 10-day survey and the 50/50 ratio remained unchanged at its conclusion.
The responses to questions two and three staked out a ratio at the beginning of the survey period that remained constant until the end.
The responses to question number two, whether the town board should use $100,000 of the reserve fund to reduce this year’s proposed tax increase from 1.5% to 0%, ended up 341 for and 179 against, a 66%-34% ratio.
The responses to question number three, whether the town board should use $200,000 of the reserve fund to maintain two weekly garbage pick-ups, ended up 164 for and 356 against, a 32%-68% ratio.
Question #4, the multi-part question
Although we prefaced Question 4 with the comment, “Here comes the multi-part, but it’s easy,” we misspoke. It was not easy. We need to work on the phrasing of that one for next time.
When we asked how many participants had children, only 35 owned up to it. However, when we asked how many children the participants had in their households, we got 326 participants telling us they had 675 children among them. We would assume that the 35 who initially owned up to parenthood are included in the 326 who provided the number of children in their household. 170 said, no, there were no children in their households.
Our question about the age range of the adults in the households who participated was more useful. The total number is greater than the number of participants because the participants were providing information about the number of adults in the entire household. It is interesting to note that the vast majority of the participants were between 35 and 65 years old.
18 – 35 years: 111
35 – 50 years: 283
50 – 65 years: 267
65+ years: 67
We encourage you to read the comments submitted by the survey participants. Click HERE to go to the comments.
Click here to view these bar graph results in a new window
Copyright 2012 NewCastleNOW.org
