Niles is asking residents how satisfied they are with village services using a survey created by graduate students at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The survey is part of a capstone course at the university’s graduate program in public administration. According to the school’s website, the capstone course provides students with problem-solving team-based experience within public or nonprofit organizations.
“Government, community, and nonprofit organizations work with the PA program to identify relevant projects that challenge students and serve agency goals,” according to the UIC website.
Niles village staff submitted multiple project proposals to the program and UIC chose to work on a community survey, said Hayley Garard, communications coordinator for Niles. The survey was created by the students at no cost to the village taxpayers, she said. It was posted online for three weeks earlier this year and just under 200 responses were submitted, Garard said. Graduate students involved in the project will analyze the responses and present their results to the village, she said.
The students were on a tight timeline, Garard said, and the village decided to reopen the survey in the hope of receiving additional responses.
“To make it statistically significant we’d like to get 1,000 responses,” she said. “We’ll keep this up through the summer or as long as we need to keep it up. We are fortunate not to have a deadline for this.”Garard said paper copies of the survey will also be available to residents at Village Hall, the Niles Senior Center, Niles Family Fitness Center, the Niles Public Library and at events like Bike Niles Fest.
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The survey asks residents to rate the quality of the village’s garbage and recycling services, the pavement quality of major roads and residential streets, the quality and timeliness of snow removal, accessibility for bicyclists and pedestrian, the Free Bus service operated by Pace bus system and maintenance of trees in village parkways. The survey also asks residents to rate the quality of commercial development in Niles, how safe they feel walking the village streets at night and the quality of their experiences with the village’s ambulance service, fire and police departments.
Once the village reaches the statistically significant threshold, Garard said the results will be analyzed and presented to Niles officials.
What actions the village will take in regards to the results “will depend on the responses,” she said.
“This is just a way to help us gauge how the community feels about their services. If there are problem areas, we’ll look into that further, or perhaps we’ll do a second survey to get more in-depth,” Garard said. Other options may include a public hearing on a certain topic if issues with a particular service are identified, she added.
“We are pretty confident with our services,” Garard said. “At the same time, we still want to give residents the chance to give us feedback. (The survey) should provide valuable feedback for the village.”
The survey can be found online at: https://www.vniles.com.
Lee V. Gaines is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.