Residents like Queens living

Eighty-eight percent of city residents rated their neighborhood as a fair, good or excellent place to live, according to an independent survey Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum released at the Forest Hills Library.
The survey, entitled “NYC Feedback, Citywide Customer Survey,” which the leaders unveiled on Wednesday, December 3, detailed information from more than 24,000 residents from all five boroughs about quality of life, customer service and access to government, community conditions, public education and a number of other categories.
“With the economy causing tax revenues to fall, it’s more important than ever for city agencies to be effective, efficient and responsive,” Bloomberg said. “To do that, we need to obtain as much accurate information as possible to make smart decisions about where to invest our limited resources.”
In June, the survey was sent to more than 135,000 randomly-selected city residents and included 34 questions that asked residents to respond excellent, good, fair or poor to the questions.
The information in the survey, which is broken down by the individual community boards in the five boroughs, revealed that 13 percent of Queens respondents rated their neighborhood as an excellent place to live; 50 percent rated it as good, 28 percent said it was fair; and only 8 percent characterized it as poor. Those numbers were a little bit better than the citywide numbers where 12 percent of respondents rated their neighborhood as poor.
In addition, many Queens respondents rated fire protection and emergency medical services as the highest rated city services in their neighborhoods, while control of street noise and storm water drainage and sewer maintenance were frequently mentioned as the lowest rated services.
Other survey highlights included 88 percent of respondents citywide rating public safety as fair, good or excellent and 92 percent rating human services, including community and senior centers fair or higher. However, 42 percent of respondents rated social services like preventing homelessness, public housing and public assistance as poor. Residents can see how their community did by logging onto www.nyc.gov
The Mayor’s Office of Operations and Public Advocate’s Office will continue to analyze the survey results and look for ways to address some of the findings.
“Our next phase of the project will use focus groups and market research techniques to help us understand perceptions and ratings of city services, so that we can better respond to the needs and concerns of New Yorkers,” Gotbaum said.