Lodi surveys residents on city services

Lodi residents recently received a text message from the city asking them to complete a survey on city issues and services.

“We’re trying to figure out what things people in the community want, what’s important to people, so we can prioritize what the city is going to do and how it is going to move forward in the coming years,” City Manager Steve Schwabauer said about the survey on Thursday.

According to Schwabauer, the survey asks questions about how people in Lodi prioritize service in various categories such as police, fire, parks, homelessness, gang intervention and prevention and more.

One of the major questions residents were asked whether they would support a public safety measure enacting an ongoing half cent sales tax to fund police and fire.

The tax would provide $5.4 million annually to increase response time for police and fire, maintain patrols and firefighter coverage and provide gang prevention and intervention services.

The measure would require independent citizen oversight, a mandatory financial audit and yearly reports to the community.

After asking if they would consider the measure, residents taking the survey were presented with a series of circumstances and were asked whether they would be more likely or less likely to vote yes or no on the measure based on those circumstances.

“It’s asking a whole series of questions about what it is that you prioritize enough to want to support it,” Schwabauer said.

Once the information is collected, Schwabauer said, city staff will share the findings with the city council and seek direction on what they want to do. If enough people answered the survey in favor of the measure, Schwabauer said Lodians might see it on the ballot in November.

A similar measure, Measure S, made the ballot in November of 2016, but was a few votes short of the two-thirds majority needed for it to pass. Out of Lodi voters, 66.61 percent voted yes (17,339 votes) while 36.33 percent voted no (9,895 votes) — the measure needed a full 66.66 percent in order to pass.

The measure called for a cent sales tax to fund additional Lodi police officers, a gangprevention worker and additional staffing for the Lodi

Fire Department to keep Engine 1 in service full-time.

The survey was put together by Godbe Research, a scientific research firm in San Mateo. Not all residents received a survey because the city

couldn’t afford to survey everyone.

“Surveying 65,000 people would be extraordinarily expensive,” Schwabauer said.

The last day to complete the survey is Feb. 22. The city was

able to obtain the cellphone numbers of those who received the survey from public records at the San Joaquin County Registrar of Voters, the City of Lodi and third-party opt-in sources.