EAGAN, MN – Despite tax hikes, vandalism, school district budget deficits, high housing prices, an illegal immigrant allegedly mowing down two people with the minivan where he lived, a deadly bike trail, one of the city’s largest employers slashing jobs, a gasoline spill that left benzene in the groundwater, methamphetamine infiltrating the city by the tens of kilos, children left motherless by a truck driver who allegedly ran a red light at one of the city’s major intersections, the ousting and reinstatement of a city council member by her fellow board members, a professional football organization whose team failed to make the playoffs despite a fancy new headquarters built on what used to be acres of woodland, professional shoplifting rings targeting a local mall, a 3-year-old killed in a foster home, child pornographers and molesters, near drownings in pools at the city’s apartment complexes and even a tiny dog stolen from his home, most of the city residents who responded to a city-commissioned survey rated Eagan a good, safe place to live – although most acknowledged they weren’t paying attention to the local news.
About two-thirds of the respondents to the survey commissioned by the city, 66 percent, rated Eagan as an excellent place to live, according to the results of the report provided to Eagan city officials. Thirty-three percent rated Eagan a good place to live, and one percent reported it a fair place to live, according to the report.
The report was the result of a survey of about 1,600 city households to assess the city’s livability based on responses to various criteria such as safety, community involvement, the economy and natural environment. The report was compiled by Boulder, Colorado based National Research Center as part of its National Citizen Survey. A portion of Eagan’s households were mailed survey forms in mid-2018 asking them to rank the city on a variety of criteria with four choices: excellent, good, fair, or poor. The survey was not open for general response. The city picked which households would receive the survey.
Although 66 percent of households surveyed rated the city an excellent place to live, Eagan households were less enthusiastic about the quality of city-provided services, according to the report. Thirty-one percent rated the overall quality of city services excellent, 58 percent rated them good, and 10 percent of respondents rated them fair.
Most of the respondents, 86 percent, had not reported a crime to the city’s police department, according to the report.
The city reported the results on its website, lumping together good and excellent rankings to report high percentages of apparently satisfied residents. The city has not posted to its website a supplemental report comparing the 2018 results to previous years.
Among the lower rankings in the survey were for the quality of work by the Eagan City Council and the city’s snow plowing. Fourteen percent of respondents ranked the category “Job Done by Eagan City Council” as poor or fair, while 20 percent rated it excellent and 66 percent rated it good.
Forty-one percent of respondents ranked the quality of snow plowing on city trails and sidewalks as fair or poor, according to the report. Forty-five percent ranked the timeliness of that plowing as fair to poor. Survey respondents were happier with the snow plowing on their neighborhood streets, according to the report. Twenty-seven percent ranked the quality of snow plowing on neighborhood streets as fair or poor. Thirty-four percent ranked the timeliness of that plowing as fair or poor.
Despite the city’s hefty expenditures on communication media, most respondents replied they never use it. Eighty-four percent of respondents replied they “never” used Eagan Television (ETV). Twenty-three to eighty-one percent reported they never used the city’s recreational activities catalog, the resident newsletter, the city website, the city’s official newspaper, emails from the city, the Nextdoor application used by police to restrict announcements of the city’s crime to geographic areas, the city’s Facebook page or its Twitter posts. The city recently hired a new communications director at an annual salary of about $124,000.
Most residents surveyed also reported they don’t use the recreational facilities owned and operated by the city. The most frequently used was the Cascade Bay water park, with 39 percent of respondents saying they were aware of the park and had used it. Use of the Eagan Civic Arena, the local ice rink, was reported at 30 percent. Eight percent of respondents said they had used the city’s public access channel.