On July 12, 2011 the Merger 2.0 Task Force’s Public Safety Committee put out a SurveyMonkey survey for Louisville Metro residents on what it called a” variety of public safety issues, including citizens’ experience with the Louisville Metro Police Department and Metro Corrections.”
Getting to the survey
The 37-question survey was a bit difficult to find at www.louisvilleky.gov. It took me a little bit of time to find it.
If you are interested in taking this survey, go on this link http://www.louisvilleky.gov/News/WideNewsItem.htm?PostingGuid={C8FC8E86-2661-4BBE-8217-DA7374450235} and then click on the words “participate in a survey.”
The questions
As per the release, it asked the demographic information that included age, sex, neighborhood and metro council district.
The questions in general are quality assurance questions and opinion questions. There were a number of multiple choice questions seeking opinion about the performance of LMPD. There were also a number of multiple choice questions seeking opinion about what to do with different types of criminal offenders.
The most difficult questions were “yes or no” questions that included:
27.) Would you be willing to pay more to have more police on the streets?
28.) Would you be willing to pay more to keep more criminals in jail?
In the other merged settings, people have typically been resistant to new taxes. Louisville has been no exception as the electorate voted down the well-crafted “Libraries Yes” campaign. I hope that the report contains a question-by-question breakdown so we can see what people responded to on these difficult questions.
My favorite question was number 36: Are you aware that it costs $64 a day to keep an offender in the Louisville Metro Jail? Well, how many of us really are aware of things inside of Corrections administration and the Metro Finance Department anyway?
Lastly, I will be curious to read the report when it comes out in mid to late August and to see if there is any valid discussion about question #37:
Was there one question that you want the Merger 2.0 Public Safety Committee to address? Or are there other comments that you would like to make regarding the issues in this survey?
How many questions about garbage pickup and streetlights will they get?
Time to take the survey
The news release said it was going to take 10 minutes to take the survey, and that is pretty accurate. I, of course, hemmed and hawed over questions 27 and 28, but it took me that about that much time. Again, if you have about 10 minutes, go to the link above and have at it.
