Resident Engagement Survey Leads City to Upgrade Water Infrastructure and Invest in Neighborhoods

City officials needed to survey residents to identify the community’s top concerns, and prioritize time and cost-efficient projects to address them.

Like most local municipalities, Clive officials want to focus their time and money on the community’s most pressing concerns. However, this ongoing effort requires resident engagement strategies to ensure the community concerns being targeted are still the most pressing. Identifying resident concerns helps the city prioritize projects that will address resident feedback and make impactful change in the community. The city also wanted a means to track performance and resident sentiment over a span of multiple years to understand if changes being made are making a measurable impact.

Clive officials learned that infrastructure and development are top concerns for the community and prioritized projects in those areas. 

Since 2012, Clive has regularly conducted The National Community Survey (The NCS), a scientific resident engagement survey, to gather feedback from residents about local government services and livability. Results from The NCS indicated infrastructure and development are top concerns for Clive residents.

“By performing a citizen satisfaction survey every other year for the past number of years, Clive has been able to identify trend lines where citizen satisfaction may be increasing or decreasing,” said Pete De Kock, Clive’s Assistant City Manager.

INFRASTRUCTURE

Clive has committed to investing in the city’s infrastructure based on resident feedback gathered via The NCS For example, the city invests in gravity sanitary sewers, limiting the stress on the city’s sewer system and requiring less maintenance than other sewer types. Maintenance is also prioritized through annual testing of every water control valve in the city’s water system, allowing Clive to be more proactive about repairs and avoid large-scale water shutoffs.

Clive's forward-thinking attitude is also seen in recently adopted cutting-edge stormwater management regulations, as well as a plan for roads, drinking water systems, the sanitary sewer system, and bank erosion.

“The city feels our continuous investment in infrastructure is necessary to maintain the exceptionally high citizen satisfaction ratings the city has seen for road and utility infrastructure,” said De Kock.

THOUGHTFUL DEVELOPMENT

Residents were also concerned about development and wanted Clive’s leaders to focus on maintaining beautiful residential neighborhoods, as mentioned in Clive’s vision to be a “beautiful and safe city with great residential neighborhoods.”

Clive’s leaders are now educating potential developers about the city’s development expectations. These expectations include integrated street design, attractive landscaping, a variety of architecture, and thoughtful material usage. Signed zoning and development agreements ensure these requirements are legally binding and carry forward to future owners of the property. Prioritizing development, so it aligns with resident feedback, has resulted in Clive receiving high ratings on The NCS related to land use, zoning, and code enforcement.

The city has also focused on improving and further developing green space, including its long greenbelt park and trail system for which a master plan was recently approved after 18 months of discussion.

Clive’s efforts have paid off in regard to resident satisfaction. Data from The NCS show that Clive’s residents rate all aspects of community design higher than the national average.