Laramigos like living here but also have some complaints, survey shows
The latest Laramie Community Survey shows residents support the city’s push to address the housing shortage and generally view the police favorably, but most are dissatisfied with road maintenance.
Laramie residents are slightly more fond of the police and much more supportive of the city taking action to address the housing shortage than they were this time last year, according to Laramie’s latest community survey results.
The same polling shows Laramie residents are highly satisfied with life in Laramie and typically feel very safe, but they are less satisfied with some city services and disappointed by the city’s road and street maintenance.
The Laramie city government runs a continuous survey of its residents through Zencity, a private company that specializes in surveys of this sort and reports back to the Laramie City Council periodically.
Brandon Echols, Zencity customer success manager, presented the latest survey results during the council meeting Tuesday. The data he presented was collected during the final three months of 2023.
“The community survey is a recurring survey that never stops running,” Echols said. “It’s distributed via digital advertising and is aimed at trying to understand the sentiment of various topics throughout the city directly from your residents.”
Survey results are matched to U.S. Census data to build a representative sample and all results are statistically significant, according to Echols’ presentation.
The latest findings — drawn from 449 survey respondents — show that nearly 70 percent of Laramigos are satisfied with life in Laramie, especially with their access to higher education, good schools, and good parks and when it comes to overall safety.
However, residents are less satisfied with the quality of waste and recycling services and largely dissatisfied with city services in general, their ability to offer input to city government, and overall street and road maintenance.
A full 56 percent of respondents reported dissatisfaction with the city’s road maintenance — but that figure is trending downward, having dropped 5 percentage points since the last survey, suggesting that residents are becoming less dissatisfied.
Comparing Laramie to national benchmarks, the survey finds Laramie residents are more likely to report feeling safe (72 percent) than residents of the average U.S. city (60 percent). However, Laramie residents were less likely to report their city is accepting of residents of all backgrounds. Only 44 percent of respondents said the city was accepting, well below the national average of 54 percent.
But the starkest difference between Laramie and the national average involved waste and recycling. While nationally 60 percent of respondents tend to be satisfied with their city’s waste collection, just 44 percent of Laramie respondents were.
Respondents were asked: “What is the thing you would most want to change about life in Laramie?”
The most common response was housing, followed by road safety, followed by public transportation.
Some of the questions asked during this latest round of community input were the exact same questions asked during last year’s survey period — giving Zencity, the council and the public a chance to see how attitudes have changed in the intervening year.
There have been noticeable shifts in responses about housing and police.
Last year, Zencity showed 51 percent of residents agreed that “Laramie’s city government should become directly involved in development to expand housing options for middle-income workers and low-income persons.” This year, that number has risen to 57 percent.
Both homeowners and renters became more supportive of the city getting involved in housing, but especially renters. During the last survey, 58 percent of renters supported that involvement. Now, 67 percent of renters do.
Residents also appear to have grown more comfortable with the police. In last year’s survey, 54 percent of respondents agreed that “the Laramie Police Department/LPD treats people with dignity and respect.” In this year’s survey, 57 percent of respondents agreed with the same.
The exception to this trend was respondents aged 35-54. During last year’s survey, 57 percent of that age cohort viewed the police as treating people with dignity and respect. In this year’s survey, that number has fallen 9 percentage points to 48 percent.
Last year’s survey broke down responses to this question by race and ethnicity, finding Hispanic respondents were far less likely to believe LPD treats people with dignity and respect. This year’s survey presentation doesn’t include that race/ethnicity breakdown.
Good story. Glad you compared Laramie to national results. Would be interesting to find out why citizens are unhappy with waste and recycling. Seems like Laramie does a good job to me.
I was not surprised with the survey results in the regards to housing. Housing has been a problem for years with University and WyoTech students and possibly LCCC students all competing for the same rentals. The housing market is just crazy at the moment, houses that were 150K are now 250K.
I also was not shocked at the roads results. We as council hear about it monthly. Rather its parking or streets.
We know its a big project to tackle and without much funding its hard, then you bring in the discussion of West Laramie. West Laramie was annexed into Laramie in the 50's due to a state mandate. Living conditions were not up to par with wells and septic systems.
This is were the problem comes in, is it fair for the city to pay for the roads when its common for the developer to pay for those roadways. Since it is already developed do just the citizens in West Laramie pay for them? Does all of Laramie? I personally believe, as do others per emails we receive, West Laramie feels they are separate from Laramie and don't receive the attention other parts of Laramie receives.
Lastly, I was surprised with the waste and recycling. I'm going to see on the next survey if they can ask another question on what they would like changed with it.
Rant over* lol