Results are in for the 2025 City of Cottage Grove Community Survey.
Conducted by Polco between March 20 to May 1 this year, the survey utilized a representative sample of 483 city residents, taken from a mailing initially sent to 3,000 households. Representative samples are used in statistics to ensure data accuracy, with survey results weighted so that the demographic profile of respondents matched that of adults in Cottage Grove.
The survey by Polco remained open for six weeks, being available in both English and Spanish. Followup was made on initial mailings to encourage residents who hadn’t filled the survey out to do so. Approximately one percent of the initial 3,000 mailings were returned due to address issues, with 483 of those who received the mail survey ultimately completing it.
Among the many takeaways from the city commissioned survey with a 95 percent confidence interval are that 8 of 10 residents experience a high quality of life, with “ease of travel by car” receiving an 87 positive rating.
Broken down further, the quality of life ratings were 21 percent ‘excellent,’ 58 percent ‘good,’ 19 percent ‘fair,’ and one percent ‘poor.’
Also among areas with overall high positive ratings were the availability of paths and walking trails (86 percent), ease of public parking (82 percent), street cleaning (79 percent), snow removal (77 percent), sidewalk maintenance (75 percent), ease of walking (73 percent), traffic flow on major streets (73 percent), ease of travel by bicycle (71 percent), and street repair (61 percent).
As for general community design in commercial and residential areas, a full 53 percent ranked the city ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ in survey results, a combined 46 percent ranking it fair or poor.
Scoring higher than the national benchmark meanwhile were variety of housing options and availability of affordable quality housing, with ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ ratings of 63 percent and 89 percent respectively.
Areas for improvement or that ranked lower than the national benchmark included place to work (49 percent positive) and place to visit (35 percent positive). Also areas showing potential improvement were opportunities for education, culture, and the arts (39 percent ‘good’ or ‘excellent’) and connection and engagement of residents with the community, roughly equal percentages (40 and 43 percent respectively) for ‘good’ and ‘fair’ in this category. Preservation of historical or cultural character of the community and drinking water both scored lower than the national benchmark, coming in at 41 percent and 48 percent respectively.
Among key areas to focus on according to survey respondents included the economy at 86 percent, with 59 percent of respondents offering a ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ rating for the city’s overall economic health. Residents pointed toward drinking water as a potential areas of improvement, with half of respondents giving positive ratings.
Lower than average ratings as compared to the national benchmark were given to Cottage Grove as a place to work or visit, as well as the variety of business and service establishments.
Also included in survey results was the finding that approximately 34 percent of residents were satisfied with the current level of taxes and services, with 32 percent thinking they paid too much and 15 percent willing to accept service reductions if it meant lower taxes. A full 11 percent were willing to pay more taxes if it meant more services.
As for the long term outlook, a custom question developed by the city for insight into long term focus saw utilities and services rank high, a full 97 percent placing utilities as being a ‘high’ or ‘medium’ priority. Also deemed as ‘high’ or ‘medium’ priority by survey respondents were fire and EMS (93 percent), transportation (91 percent), police (91 percent), and economic prosperity (88 percent).
As for livability, survey respondents in the representative sample ranked Safety highest, both in quality (86 percent) and importance (88 percent). Coming in after safety on the livability ratings chart were parks and recreation (85 percent quality and 75 percent importance) along with natural environment (80 percent quality and 78 percent importance).
Ranked lower than the national benchmark for importance was mobility, at 60 percent importance.
Ranked lower than the national benchmark for quality and importance meanwhile was education, rated at just 40 percent for quality with a 57 percent importance rating.
Also included in the livability rankings were utilities (70 percent quality and 84 percent importance), health and wellness (65 percent quality and 64 percent importance), economy (59 percent quality and 86 percent important), mobility (56 percent quality and 60 percent importance), community design (54 percent quality and 71 percent importance), and inclusivity and engagement (48 percent quality and 53 percent importance)
As for confidence in local government, survey results show a survey rating returns of 10 percent ‘excellent,’ 46 percent ‘good,’ 27 percent ‘fair,’ and 17 percent ‘poor.’ Employee customer services were rated at 89 percent ‘excellent’ or ‘good,’ with public information services rated 73 percent ‘excellent’ or ‘good.’ Residents rated the government highly in treating residents with respect (75 percent) and fairly (68 percent), while perception of being honest was rated at 64 percent, with 62 percent rated ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ the city effort to inform residents of issues facing the community. A full 60 percent rated the city as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ at being open and transparent to the public, while 59 percent of survey respondents gave the city a ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ rating on whether it generally acted in the best interests of the community. A full 54 percent approved of the value of services for taxes paid to Cottage Grove, 53 percent approved of the overall direction, and 52 percent rated good or excellent the city’s attempts to welcome resident involvement.
As for other takeaways from the community survey, public safety was rated high, a combined 86 percent giving marks of ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ on this measure, with 11 percent choosing ‘fair’ and three percent ‘poor.’ Police services (89 percent) and crime prevention (86 percent) both scored higher than the national benchmark, while other fire and EMS related questions scored results similar to the national benchmark.
Also in results from the community survey was natural environment, with a combined 81 percent scoring the city ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ in this category. Cleanliness and air quality came in with good marks, with residents giving a combined ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ rating of 83 percent for cleanliness and 80 percent for air quality.
Water quality came in at 65 percent ‘good’ or ‘excellent,’ similar to the national benchmark.
Coming in higher than the national benchmark was recycling, with 83 percent ranking this as ‘good’ or ‘excellent.’ In parks and recreation a full 85 percent gave a rating of ‘good’ or ‘excellent,’ while 13 percent ranked parks and recreation as ‘fair’ and three percent ‘poor.” A full 86 percent rated the city as a good place to raise children, followed with 60 percent who rated it a place to retire and 57 percent who rated it ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ in terms of sense of community, all similar to the national benchmark.
Full results for the representative sample survey are at the city website.
Along with the representative sample survey, an open participation survey was conducted as well. The open participation survey remained open for three weeks, being publicized by the city and available with results on its website.