Survey says ... majority of Vaughan residents happy, but want action on traffic, health care


Yorkregion.com
Jan. 29, 2015
By Adam Martin-Robbins


The vast majority of people living in Vaughan appear pretty pleased about their quality of life and the services they get from the city, according to results of the latest city survey.

But, not surprisingly, they’d like to see action taken to deal with the crippling traffic congestion and to improve local health care services.

Ninety-five per cent of the 800 residents polled by Forum Research between Nov. 18 and Dec. 3 rated quality of life in Vaughan as either good (63 per cent) or very good (32 per cent).

The telephone survey - which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.45, 19 times out of 20 - was conducted on behalf of the city to get a sense of residents’ thoughts, feelings and opinions about such things as quality of life in the city, delivery of services and how the municipality spends their tax dollars, among others.

The survey’s key findings also include: 90 per cent of residents are very or somewhat satisfied with city services overall while 72 per cent of residents believe they get very good or fairly good value for their tax dollars.

Among the municipal service providers, those that received the highest satisfaction ratings were the fire department at 99 per cent, Vaughan Public Libraries at 94 per cent and recreation and fitness at 92 per cent.

“Basically, what we see in this data is really that 2014 is really on par with most previous trends and historical data,”

Forum vice-president Leo Hussey said during his presentation of the survey’s findings to council members last Friday.

The city also conducted citizen surveys for the past several years including 2009, 2011 and 2012.

One of the surprises from the 2014 survey was the jump in satisfaction with arts and culture programming in the city, which saw 90 per cent of respondents very satisfied or somewhat satisfied.

That was up 12 per cent from the previous survey in 2012.

City staff attributed that jump, in part, to improvements in communications about and marketing of programs and services offered across the city.

Of course, not all the survey’s findings were quite so rosy.

Sixty-one per cent of people were not very satisfied or not at all satisfied with Vaughan’s transportation network while 41 per cent were not very satisfied or not at all satisfied with health-care offerings including hospitals and clinics.

Other areas of concern included rising property taxes, road maintenance and too much growth.

Councillors’ reaction to the survey results was mixed.

A few of them expressed skepticism about some of the survey’s findings.

“I do think that while this is a good survey and it does give us some reflection of what residents are feeling ... the fact that the questions are not very definitive, or maybe in-depth, it doesn’t really give us a true picture,” Concord/North Thornhill Councillor Sandra Yeung Racco said.

West Woodbridge Councillor Tony Carella said the city can’t do a whole lot to address traffic congestion or the lack of a hospital, given that the bulk of the city’s major roadways are York Region’s responsibility while health care and the hospital are primarily the province’s responsibility.

But Maple/Kleinburg Councillor Marilyn Iafrate said the survey gives Vaughan information it can use to try to pressure the upper-tier governments to invest in measures aimed at tackling gridlock and traffic congestion.

“I hope before we’re through this budget process that we’re sending some type of clear message through the regional councillors, through a resolution, through a letter, to the Region of York our expectation that money will be spent on alleviating traffic and improving transportation,” she said.

East Woodbridge Councillor Rosanna DeFrancesca, meanwhile, said the concerns raised in the survey reflect exactly what voters have been telling her since 2010.

And it’s the job of city staff and council to find solutions, she added.

“This is what I’ve been hearing door-to-door for the last four years,” she said. “What I want to know is how are we going to fix it? And staff here, in my opinion, needs to think outside the box.”

For his part, Mackenzie Health president and CEO Altaf Stationwala said he really wasn’t “surprised” that there’s a fairly low level of satisfaction with local health care and hospital services, which only rated in the high 50s.

“That’s core to the business case of why we’re building the Vaughan hospital because there just hasn’t been the access that the residents need locally to health care and key to that is the new hospital,” he said. “We’re clear that it’s going to get better and, at the same time, there is some access. People may not appreciate some of the specialty clinics we offer in Vaughan, but the hospital is, I think, the No. 1 issue for all residents. I hear that from my neighbours every day, living in Vaughan.”

He noted the hospital, to be built at the northwest corner of Jane Street and Major Mackenzie Drive, is on track to open in 2019, but in the meantime efforts are being made to handle rising needs for service.

“We have a number of clinics - from diabetes education to cardiac rehab to chronic kidney disease - and we continue to look at expanding other clinics to try and manage some of the demand issues,” Stationwala said. “We actually just opened a mental health clinic in Vaughan, as well, in the last year.”

For more about the survey results, visit vaughan.ca.