The National Citizen Survey results are in for Peoria County. A few observations:

The Open-ended Question report includes just five references to the museum. The question was, “What do you think will be the single most important issue facing Peoria County in the next five years?” Here are the museum responses, verbatim from the report:

• “Reinvigorating tie downtown are a finish the Museum & Warehouse District. Attract small businesses & residential to downtown to promote growth!”
• “Raising taxes for a museum, then not building it.”
• “I don’t think the coming museum was what we needed. For a city this time, Lake views was quite adequate – He have enough along the never and need to address other more important ways to use our monetary spending. You have a lot to be proud if in that Previous street, sidewalks & the like are being address-long way to go yet”
• “That stupid museum”
• “To terminate the museum project. Taxpayers cannot afford more debt for a want. Spend money on public safety services! Repeal the public facility sales tax!”

Yes, I was surprised, too. I thought a large number of people would recognize that the single most important issue facing Peoria in the next five years will be what to do with all the money that’s going to be rolling in as a result of the new museum. Actually, between that and the huge housing boom we’re going to have because of the Kellar Branch trail being completed, Peoria’s only problem is going to be deciding whether to pave the streets with gold or marble.

Incidentally, I have to wonder if a few of these responses were originally handwritten and then run through OCR (optical character recognition) software, or if people just don’t know how to type.

Meanwhile, here’s a random sampling of responses on the overall Results report:

• 86% of respondents said job growth is too slow in the County, while 36% said retail growth was too slow.
• Only 26% of respondents said they had attended a local public meeting, although 51% had watched one on TV.
• 31% of respondents said the value of services for the taxes paid to Peoria County was “excellent” or “good,” down from 36% the previous year.
• 32% of respondents said the overall direction Peoria County is taking was “excellent” or “good,” down from 41% the previous year.
• Only 21% of respondents said the job Peoria County does at listening to its citizens was “excellent or “good,” down from 33% the previous year.

Yes, if I had gotten the survey, I would have marked Peoria County’s ability to listen as “poor” myself. Remember the previous year’s survey? It included the question, “To what degree would you support or oppose a voter referendum to increase the sales tax rate by .25 percent (for example, from 8.0% to 8.25% for the City of Peoria) to fund the remaining cost of constructing money?” Results:

That’s right: 65% of County respondents somewhat or strongly opposed a tax referendum. So what did the County do? They put a tax referendum question on the very next ballot. It’s not surprising that residents the following year gave them poor marks for listening, or that fewer respondents feel the County is heading in the right direction now.