QLDC launches community trust survey - in secret

The QLDC promised to announce their postponed community trust survey last month (February) - but that did not happen. The trust and confidence survey questions were removed from the QLDC's regular Quality of Life survey last year after a previous community satisfaction rating dropped to 15% and a Crux replacement survey came up with only 4%.

But Crux readers have reported that they have today started receiving survey forms from QLDC titled "Community Insights Survey."

The covering email says this - and it's pretty short on detail about confidence and trust:

"You have been randomly selected from the Ratepayers Records to take part in the Queenstown Lakes District Council Community Insights Survey.

"Our Council’s business covers a wide range of activities and impacts your daily life more than you may realise. Roads, footpaths, water supply, recycling, recreation facilities, animal control, building consents, policy development and town planning are some of our many responsibilities.

"We want to hear how you think we are doing. By sharing your thoughts about Council services and facilities, you can help us understand what’s going well and where improvements can be made."

In other words it is presented as just another version of the Quality of Life Survey with hardly any questions about trust, satisfaction and confidence in the council or councillors.

Crux spoke with Key Research who are being paid $15,000 to run the survey and they explained that until March 16 all survey forms would only be sent to "random" ratepayers - then there would be a public version of the survey available on the council's website.

Key Research promised a call back to explain this methodology - but we heard nothing. They also refused to supply a copy of the survey.

One Crux reader told us:

"The questions were about council facilities etc and then a bit about climate change and then if I trusted the council and whether their communication with the ratepayers was adequate."

So it looks as though the "replacement" community trust survey that was promised last year won't allow any direct comparison with previous years or provide much actual data on how much residents/ratepayers trust the QLDC or elected members.