THE CITY’S 2013 National Citizen Survey revealed that 92 percent of Ann Arbor residents rated the city as an “excellent” or “good” place to live based on overall quality of life. That figure is unchanged from the National Citizen Survey conducted in 2008. This was the story reported by the city’s communication staff, and repeated by most of the local media. However, a closer examination of the National Citizen Survey revealed that there were significant drops in a number of areas that asked residents to rate how well city services are provided. Those services included street repair, street cleaning, street lighting, snow removal and sidewalk maintenance. There were significant decreases in the number of citizens who rated city parks “excellent” or “good” and who rated traffic enforcement and garbage collection “excellent” or “good.”

In addition, only 10 percent of the almost 800 survey respondents who participated in the 2013 survey rated as “excellent” the value of services offered in return for the taxes levied. The puzzling message of the 2013 survey appears to be that while Ann Arbor is an “excellent” place to live, city officials are not doing an excellent job delivering quality services in exchange for the taxes levied.

In response to the first significant snowfall of the season, which dumped between 5-7 inches of snow on the city, according to a city official who spoke at the December 16th City Council meeting,  it took 30 hours to completely plow the city’s streets and cul de sacs. City officials claimed that because the snowfall began on a Friday and continued throughout Saturday, downtown streets went unplowed because “on the weekend the town doesn’t really clear out.” The same official also blamed “blowing and drifting” snow for the lackluster performance of the city’s plows.

It was a performance reminiscent of former City Administrator Roger Fraser’s in 2011 when he claimed that snow plowing during a February storm had been slow because it was “one of the wettest snows in two years.” It was a spurious claim debunked by a state meteorologist.

In Dearborn, three or more inches of snow may be considered a snow emergency, and in those cases residents are required to move parked cars off of city streets so that they can be cleared efficiently. In Ann Arbor, according to the city’s website, “The city’s goal is to clear all major and residential streets within 24 hours of an ‘average’ four-inch snowstorm.” While Ann Arbor officials aim to have the city’s streets and cul de sacs cleared within 24 hours, the city of St. Paul, Minnesota aims to have that city’s streets completely plowed 8-12 hours after all snowfalls.

Ann Arbor’s most recent application to the Bicycle Friendly Community Award program sponsored by the League of American Bicyclists states that the City of Ann Arbor plows its bike lanes in winter whenever possible. That claim, as anyone who commutes around the city by bike in winter knows, is absurd. Not only do bike lanes remain unplowed, adjoining city streets remain unsalted and unplowed, as well.

City governments exist to provide services. We can only wonder about the 2013 survey that concludes the quality of life in Ann Arbor is “excellent” when the majority of the same respondents said services provided are not excellent, and the value for residents’ tax dollars is judged as equally substandard. We not only urge City Council members to look more critically at the results of the 2013 National Citizen Survey, but to zero in on the citizen responses that focused on critical services rather than quality of life.