Blog Post < Previous | Next >
Marin Post
Your concerns about living in Marin: Survey Results
The results from Marin Post's survey on "Your concerns about living in Marin" are in. Almost 200 responses provided an interesting picture of the state of mind of Marin Post readers.
The survey listed 15 different categories and asked readers to rank them on a scale of 1 through 5: 1 being things they are least concerned about and 5 being things they are most concerned about.
Click here to view the final survey results.
The results showed that all of the issues noted are on people's minds,with each receiving a reasonable number of responses. There were also some comments on social media (NextDoor), saying that "Homelessness" should have been included as a category and that it was a critical issue.
That said however, several categories out-paced all the others, with the majority of respondents saying these were the things they were most concerned about. In order of their ranking, those were (1) "Traffic," (2) "High taxes & Fees," and (3) "Government waste of tax dollars."
66.41% of all respondents said "Traffic" was their biggest concern. 55.64% said that "High taxes & fees" were their biggest concern. And, 51.69% said that "Government waste of tax dollars" was their biggest concern.
Traffic coming in as the top concern is no surprise to anyone. But, the combination of concerns about high taxes and fees and concern about government waste of taxpayer's money should make local officials take note. Besides creating animosity among the general public, both of these are regressive, drive people out of the County and decrease affordability.
The second grouping of concerns that respondents indicated they were most concern about included (4) Uncontrolled growth (44.95%), (5) Government corruption and lack of transparency (40.91%), (6) Public pension liabilities (36.36%), (7) Aging roads & infrastructure (34.23%), and (8) Loss of small town character (32.11%).
Unsurprisingly, "Lack of jobs" came in dead last in the list of top concerns (9.90%) followed by "Loss of public services" (11.54%).
Somewhat surprisingly, only 23.42% of respondents said that "Lack of affordable housing" was their top concern, and more surprisingly, 22.52% said it was the thing they were least concerned about.