Las Vegans love living in Sin City, poll finds

Most of the 944 city residents surveyed about living in Las Vegas feel like they’ve hit the jackpot.

The 2016 community survey found the overall satisfaction with city services is 70 percent, significantly higher than what the firm that conducted the poll reports is the national average for cities: 45 percent.

Kansas City, Kansas-based firm ETC Institute presented the findings to the Las Vegas City Council on Wednesday.

Residents reported feeling safe in their neighborhood during the day and at night and in downtown Las Vegas during the day. The safety responses surpassed or within a couple percentage points of other large U.S. cities, except in one category — city parks. In Las Vegas, 39 percent of respondents said they felt safe in parks, compared with the 51 percent average of other large cities surveyed.

That’s a sign, particularly going into the city budget season, that the city needs to “beef up” its marshals, Mayor Carolyn Goodman said.

Respondents were largely satisfied with specific city services, with fire, sewer and emergency medical services topping the list. The city’s overall customer service drew a small percentage of unhappy marks from residents: 21 percent were very satisfied, 38 percent were satisfied, 30 percent were neutral, and 11 percent were dissatisfied.

The survey concluded that city government should focus on maintaining city streets, economic development and police services, based on the priorities respondents listed.

This marked the fourth year in a row ETC Institute did the community survey about life in Las Vegas.

The survey asked a series of questions about satisfaction with items that influence perceptions of Las Vegas, like overall quality of the neighborhood, promoting diversity and the city’s efforts to amplify economic development.

The only category where the dissatisfied answers outweighed the satisfied numbers was the quality of public schools, where 53 percent of the respondents said they were dissatisfied.

“For everything else, the positive ratings far outweighed the negative,” said Jason Morado, project manager at the ETC Institute.

The majority of residents polled said they would recommend the city as a place to live.

The respondents represented varying ages, ethnicities and income levels, and the gender breakdown was nearly equal. There were at least 150 respondents from each of the city’s six wards.

Contact Jamie Munks at jmunks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0340. Find @JamieMunksRJ on Twitter.