The city of Manitou Springs conducted a survey in late April and early May to gather feedback on the quality of service the citizens feel they are receiving from the city and several questions on the overall quality of life in Manitou.
The results were overwhelmingly positive. City Public Information Office Alex Trefry prepared the survey and presented the results to City Council at its work session on Tuesday, Sept. 14.
The survey was mailed to 1,950 Manitou addressees, as well as advertised in the Bulletin and on social media. Hard copies were available in City Hall and online.
The city received 431 responses, representing 8.2 percent of the population. The ideal response rate for surveys of this type would have produced 359 responses.
Respondents had the option of remaining anonymous, which usually produces negative feedback.
Survey questions were of two types, one asking citizens to assign grades of very good, good, neither good nor bad or don’t know, bad, very bad or non-response to Manitou as a place to live, quality of life here and quality of service from the city.
In addition, respondents were asked to comment on mobility, infrastructure, focus on tourism, landscape/aesthetic improvement, police department concerns and homelessness.
A total of 87.3 percent of respondents rated Manitou as a good or very good place to live, with less than 5 percent responding negatively. Quality of life was rated as very good or good by 86.1 percent, with less than 6 percent responding negatively.
The city’s quality of service was rated good or very good by 62.1 percent of respondents, with less than 15 percent responding negatively.
Mobility, including parking, was mentioned by 43.6 percent of respondents, infrastructure by 19 percent, too focused on tourism by 10.9 percent, andscape/aesthetic concerns and police department concerns were mentioned 8.8 percent of the time and homelessness 7.7 percent.
Forty-three respondents specifically called for free residential parking downtown. More than half of the respondents said that their preferred method of communication with the city was email. City Administrator Denise Howell followed up with the 68 respondents who requested contact from city staff.
Trefry summed up the survey’s value: “With approximately 8.2 percent of our population responding, and with the distribution of the responses being very positively skewed, we have extremely high confidence that the data being reported remains valid and true.”
City Council had ended its Sept. 7 regular meeting with an executive, or closed, session to discuss personnel matters. Mayor John Graham announced that a public statement would be prepared very soon thereafter.
A memorandum titled Roles, Responsibilities, Commitment and Accountability, from City Council and addressed to city staff and the public, was posted on the city website Sept. 10 but withdrawn after about an hour. The subject came up during the Sept. 14 work session.
Graham apologized for sending the memorandum, with Councilors Judith Chandler and Julie Wolfe objecting to not having seen an expected draft. Wolfe said that in the future, any communication from council must bear her signature or it doesn’t speak for her.
Wolfe also said that she found the memorandum “offensive.” Councilor John Shada was sympathetic to Wolfe’s position and told his colleagues that the memo that was sent out “was not the consensus of this council.”
Chandler asked why there was such a hurry on the matter.
“This was completely avoidable,” Chandler said.
Graham distributed hard copies of the memorandum that was posted to all the councilors and invited their responses or re-writes. Graham will also rewrite it; no timeline was announced.
City Council reviewed five drawings for the interior remodeling of City Hall.
Students at the Community Development College of Architecture and Planning of the University of Colorado-Denver prepared them for free. Jeffrey Wood of that institution presented them to council.
Graham asked about a timeline for this phase of the remodel and was told that the students would be available for another six to nine months. Wood added that he would like to involve the students in more of the process.
Graham also asked that Council select three designs.
Chandler and Wolfe asked that staff contribute to narrowing the selection to three, with Wolfe asking that employees below the rank of department head be included in the review process.
Shada called for the project to be done in phases to avoid the need for financing via a city-issued bond, which requires a city-wide vote. A phased approach would also allow more time for decision-making.
Graham agreed with Shada and said that the remodel is a multiyear project. Howell was asked to produce a timeline.
John Mikos, chairman of the El Paso County Democratic Party, addressed council on the necessary re-drawing of the maps of Manitou’s Congressional and state House and Senate districts.
A preliminary map, called “Staff Map 1,” was released Sept. 13 and shows Manitou grouped with Colorado Springs’ Westside and going as far north as the Rockrimmon area.
In response to Wolfe’s question, Mikos said that there are no guidelines for the districts’ political make-up, that “community of interest” was a stronger value for the redistricting commission but that “political competitiveness” was also a value.
Mikos said that the commission is very open to input and that a statement from City Council would have considerable weight. Some councilors objected to an earlier map, officially designated “preliminary,” that grouped Manitou with Monument and/or areas south of Cheyenne Mountain.
Wolfe said that Manitou has more in common with areas west of the city than with those far-ranging areas.
Graham said that a statement on redistricting would be prepared on behalf of council and that individual members of council were free to make their own presentations as well.
Manitou resident Cory Sutela, a member of the city’s Mobility and Parking Board, and Karl Stang of Manitou Springs asked that council pass a bicycle safety stop ordinance. Such an ordinance would allow bicyclists to yield, rather than stop, at a stop sign.
Several cities nationwide and in Colorado have enacted such legislation, with statistics showing a decrease in accidents involving bicycles in intersections.
In response to a question, Interim Police Chief Bill Otto said that he polled department members and that, in recent years, apparently only one ticket had been written for a bicycle offense, involving a drunken bicyclist running into a parked car.
He doesn’t think any have been written this summer, his first full summer in Manitou.
Howell will prepare a bicycle safety stop ordinance; Sutela and Stang have a sample.
Councilor Natalie Johnson of the Mask Task Force told council that a report from that group will be presented to City Council Sept. 21, when data from the recently opened District 14 schools in Manitou will be available.
The task force also includes Chandler and members of the District 14 Board of Education.