The Daily Hustle: 10/15/10

Here's hoping the Hustle doesn't throw out his bum shoulder patting himself on the back, but damn, we've covered a bunch of ground this week – agenda previews, a form-based code breakdown, and yesterday's pension and control center controversies. Even the homie Eric Pickhartz broke down yesterday's HUD announcement.

But we ain't done just yet.

Yesterday the council got survey results from the ETC Institute on citizen satisfaction. Surprise: Austin kicks ass, according to the results. From their sample size of 1,300 surveys, they concluded “The City of Austin is setting the standard for other large cities,” with high marks for customer services, safety and several other areas. Equally unsurprising were their findings that congestion-clearing improvements to streets were a citizen priority.

More intriguing was ETC's recommendation that “improvements” to police services was another citizen priority (as if we could throw any more money at the cops), ranking highest in the firm's “importance-satisfaction” scoring for public safety services.

Of course, as Bill Spelman pointed out following the presentation, improvement to police services “strikes me as a lot more amorphous and complicated” than it sounds, then asked “what aspects are most likely to increase people's satisfaction?”

The consensus from ETC was that educating people about the improvements made to police services is the most effective way to increase satisfaction – in other words, good PR.

So, how about starting with a campaign announcing that almost every extra cent we've taken in over the last goddamn decade has gone to public safety? The Hustle would be glad to help with spreading the word.

You can peruse the whole survey here (first link at the top).