C a s e S t u d y
The Annual Citizen Survey
Municipality of Gabrovo
Background:
Municipality of Gabrovo s 1999 annual citizen survey was developed with the assistance of the City of Portage, Michigan, USA, and USAID s and FLGR s Bulgarian Technical Twinning Program. The City of Portage has a 7-year tradition in conducting citizen surveys aimed at tracking how the problems faced by the City have developed and have been solved.
The goal of Gabrovo s municipal management and of the survey team is to seek citizens opinion on the condition of the city in general, on the quality of municipal services, on the problems existing in this field and on the possible solutions for them. The other important aspect is to define the degree of citizen awareness and the extent of citizens readiness to get involved in local government.
Executive Summary:
The annual citizen survey entitled Municipality of Gabrovo s Problems as Seen by the Public includes three major groups of questions: problems faced by the municipality; evaluation of municipal services and programs; citizens readiness to participate in the public life of the municipality. The survey is the new municipal management s milestone in its work for and with the citizens.
Project description:
The Municipality of Gabrovo, FLGR s Bulgarian technical Twinning Program and the City of Portage, USA, developed together a questionnaire for the annual citizen survey of the Municipality of Gabrovo. This first annual citizen survey is aimed at seeing the problems faced by the municipality through the eyes of its citizens. The questionnaire developed by the City of Portage for its own annual survey was used only as a basis for the development of Gabrovo s questionnaire, without being copied mechanically. The questions and the formulation of problems were adapted to local conditions.
The annual citizen survey includes the following groups of questions:
- Major problems faced by the Municipality of Gabrovo:
- the problems are grouped by their importance to the citizens;
- the specific problems are grouped by type;
- the problems are defined and differentiated with relation to the individual social and demographic groups.
- Evaluation of the satisfaction with municipal services and programs
- demographic specifics of the groups of satisfied and dissatisfied with municipal services.
- Citizens readiness to participate in Gabrovo s public life.
A total of 508 adult citizens of the city of Gabrovo, its neighborhoods and the four mayoralties within the municipality, were interviewed within one week. The interviewees filled out the developed standard questionnaire. Participants selection was based on a quota principle, so that the interviewees reproduced the group of adult citizens by:
- sex;
- age;
- education.
The results from the annual survey were processed and summarized by a sociologist and presented to Gabrovo s new municipal management, the local media and the former municipal management.
Benefits and results:
The survey shows the existence of:
- a clear public position on municipal problems;
- a clear identification of mechanisms which the citizens would accept in order to have a proactive and effective dialog with local authorities;
- the citizens have declared their readiness to really assist the new municipal management in its efforts aimed at finding solutions to the problems;
- in the beginning of its term, the new municipal management has a reliable survey which could serve as a milestone in the decision-making process.
