Results from a first-time citizen survey are helping Pflugerville city leaders pinpoint which services are working and which are not throughout the city.

The survey was conducted in November by the ETC Institute, a community market-based research firm. ETC asked residents their opinions on a variety of city services, from local shopping to utilities, and compared the results with statistics from other cities throughout the nation.

"We really liked the fact that [ETC] can benchmark Pflugerville ... and that benchmarking [gives] us an idea of some standardized questions to ask and then really rate how we're doing in the realm of citizen surveys," Pflugerville Public Information Officer Terri Waggoner said.

From 2,000 surveys sent out randomly to community residences, 432 responses were received back, so the survey is considered statistically accurate by ETC within a margin of 5 percent, Waggoner said. The survey was seven pages long and took approximately 15–20 minutes to fill out, according to ETC.

In regional benchmarks, the city outranked statistics from the Southwest region of the nation and the United States overall in value received for city tax dollars, quality of city services, quality of life and city growth planning. Pflugerville fell short of regional and national percentages in residents' perception of the city's overall image and appearance as well as the quality of the city's downtown.

Positives for the city included 92 percent of respondents rating their overall quality of life satisfactory or excellent.

"[ETC] chart[s] how your city is doing and how it compared with other cities," Waggoner said. "We had high expectations, and at the same time, high satisfaction ratings, and that was nice to see."

In terms of public safety, 43 percent of residents were very satisfied and 45 percent were satisfied with overall quality of police protection, and 90 percent were satisfied or very satisfied with overall quality of fire services. Approximately 92 percent of respondents felt safe walking in their neighborhoods during the day, though only 67 percent said they felt safe or very safe walking at night.

Other highly ranked facets included quality of the city's customer service at various departments and Pflugerville's Come Home to Shop campaign, which Waggoner said could be attributed to recently enacted city programs.

"We just did a Come Home to Shop campaign about a year and a half ago where the chamber and the city and the emergency services district and the [Pflugerville Community Development Corporation] and representatives from our shopping centers and downtown ... put money together to increase the campaign of Come Home to Shop," Waggoner said. "And so it was a nice compliment to see that come up in the survey."

Highlighting services that need work, the city received negative feedback on water utilities. Residents currently receive services from SouthWest Water Group, Manville Water Supply Co. or the city. Boil water notices and other issues have intermittently interrupted services, and Waggoner said the issue has been a consistent council concern. To help solve the problem, the city has asked ETC to gauge the satisfaction rates for customers of each of the water suppliers.

"While our City Council is currently focusing on customer service, quality and system reliability of water, whether it's the city's service or not, it would be nice for our staff ... to know how they're doing," Waggoner said.

Other areas of concern included traffic congestion near Kelly Lane and Toll 130, sidewalk repairs and additional street lighting. The council is set to address some of the issues with money from the city's reserve fund in 2013.

"The reserve fund projects list ... includes some sidewalk repair, includes some street lighting, includes some of the stuff that were also mentioned by our residents, including some roadway expansions," Waggoner said. "So it's nice to have that coming up right now, to show that these are some things that residents wanted to have."

City Council and staff will continue using the survey to gauge and improve programs and services. City Council plans to analyze the survey data at its retreat in the spring.