When it comes to City services, we're happy campers

Saultites are very happy campers indeed, when it comes to the range of services provided by the City of Sault Ste. Marie.

On that point, a recent poll indicates that Saultites expressed the highest level of satisfaction among Toronto and four Northern Ontario cities surveyed.

If you're inclined to disbelieve those findings, you need to know that they're from an independent poll commissioned by the City of Sudbury, which came out lowest in the service satisfaction ranking.

Contacted today by SooToday News, Chief Administrative Officer Joe Fratesi (shown) said through his administrative assistant that he was unware of the Sudbury survey.

The statistical comparison was done by OraclePoll Research Ltd., which maintains officers in Toronto, Sudbury and Montreal.

How the poll was conducted

OraclePoll conducted a province-wide random sample public opinion survey from December 9 to 16 of last year.

Polled were residents of City of Greater Sudbury, North Bay, Timmins, Sault Ste. Marie, Thunder Bay, Toronto, and in another category titled 'other areas' that included all other regions of Ontario other than those already listed.

A minimum of 75 respondents were surveyed from each of the four Northern Ontario comparison cities, as well 73 respondents from Toronto and 242 respondents from the 'other' areas.

Survey results

Reached today at OraclePoll's Sudbury office, Dr. Bob Sinclair said he wasn't commissioned to compare all of the cities to each other and so he couldn't say conclusively whether the differences in satisfaction between Sault Ste. Marie and all other communities polled were statistically significant.

But in terms of raw numbers, there's no question that the Sault topped the list of communities satisfied with their City services, Sinclair told us.

To see OraclePoll's raw data on service satisfaction, please click here. To view the same data presented as a graph, click here.

We're not a confident community

The same survey found, however, that Sault Ste. Marie ranked lower than all other polled communities when residents were asked how confident they were in the economic future of their community.

To see the raw data on that question, please click here. To view this data presented as a graph, click here.

Quality of life

Respondents were also asked to indicate their perceived level of quality of life.

On that question, Sault Ste. Marie placed in the middle of the pack, with North Bay and Timmins scoring higher and Thunder Bay and Sudbury lower.

To see OraclePoll's data on that question, please click here. To view the data presented as a graph, click here.

The province-wide poll was conducted as a benchmark analysis to compare Sudbury to other communities as part of the City of Greater Sudbury's 2003 State of the Community Survey.

You tell us

SooToday.com is currently conducting a nonscientific poll using a service satisfaction question similar to that used by OraclePoll Research.

To particpate, or to view the latest results, go to our home page and you'll find the poll at the lower right-hand side.