Flagstaff residents gave the city's recreation programs and trash collection high marks this year, according to the latest annual citizen survey results from the Social Research Lab at Northern Arizona University.

Positive ratings for the city's recreation programs hit an all-time high — 66 percent — likely linked to the opening of the Aquaplex last August. Previous surveys had roughly half of the respondents give city rec program positive ratings.

The highest rated service was garbage collection, which 91 percent of those surveyed said they believed the city was providing excellent service.

Overall, 77 percent of those surveyed gave the city positive marks for seven different city departments, including recreation, trash collection and emergency services. This represents an overall increase of 7 percentage points from the most recent survey in 2007.

The phone poll, conducted by the Social Research Laboratory at NAU between March and April of this year, surveyed 402 randomly selected adults living within Flagstaff city limits.

Jamie Bowie, the interim associate director at Social Research Laboratory before the University closed the lab this spring, said, "In general people are viewing the services offered by the city pretty positively. This is a rebound from 2007, where we had the lowest satisfaction ever. We seem to be back on track this year."

But there were several pockets of dissatisfaction among those surveyed. Chief among them was traffic.

Roughly 23 percent of those surveyed wanted to see better traffic flow, roads and mass transit options within the city, many specifically mentioning traffic along Milton Road.

City leaders note that many residents in the community do not know that Milton is actually controlled by the Arizona Department of Transportation, not the city.

The researcher offered his own theory why traffic concerns consistently top the list of residents concerns.

"On a day-to-day basis I think traffic is something that affects people closely in their lives so I am not surprised to see that up at number one again," Bowie told the Council last month.

Only 55 percent of residents approved of the city's efforts to removal snow from city streets. The ranking was the lowest ever since the surveys started in 2001.

Bowie suggested increased dissatisfaction with snow removal was related to when the survey was taken — during a time of the year when snow was falling — rather than in the fall when prior surveys were taken.

City Manager Kevin Burke, who joined the city in 2008, said firing longtime City Manager Dave Wilcox may have had an impact on the delivery of city services. He said during the 2007 survey the city was in a transitional period that affected employee morale and overall city direction.

Burke gave credit to city employees for the high marks in this year's survey, which was conducted in April.

"They've been really focused on service delivery," Burke said. "I think they've tried to be responsive to things council is setting forth and management is setting forth. Plus, I believe they want to deliver good service to the community."

The annual survey also asked whether the community would support an additional monthly fee to pay for recycling education, sustainability and environmental code enforcement services. The current $2-a-month environmental services fee, established in 2003, is insufficient to pay for the programs.

The responses came back nearly evenly split, with half saying they would be willing to pay $2 more per month, vs. 43 percent who said no and 7 percent undecided. But only 31 percent would pay an additional $3 per month, and just 23 percent would pay an additional $4 per month.

The lab had an annual contract to conduct the citizen survey since 2001, although no poll was performed in 2008. NAU closed the lab earlier this year as part of a number of cost-cutting measures it needed to plug an anticipated $22 million hole in its budget.

Joe Ferguson can be reached at jferguson@azdailysun.com or 556-2253.

On the Web:

Read the entire survey report here: http://tr.im/skj2