PROVO -- A citizen survey showed that 75 percent of Provo residents are in favor of the proposed recreation center, and 65 percent would favor the facility if the library bond is extended to pay for it.
The survey, released by Mayor John Curtis on Tuesday, also showed that generally, Provo residents are satisfied with the direction the city is going and happy with the city government. The survey was completed by Dan Jones and Associates and interviewed 415 residents, none of whom were BYU students. It had a 4 percent margin of error.
The survey presented issues like zoning, what residents would like to see improved, what they think about downtown Provo and how satisfied they are with complaint resolution. Generally, the results were good. With the exception of a disappointing downtown, people like Provo.
And, people in Provo want another rec center. The filibuster-proof majorities have to have city officials feeling pretty confident about the question they plan to put before the voters this year.
Three-fourths said they would probably or definitely favor a new facility, and more than 60 percent of those said they still would favor the new center if their property taxes increased. Not quite half of those, which was about 25 percent of the sample, said they would be willing to pay an extra $200 a year in taxes, while another 14 percent said they would pay an extra $125 a year in taxes. About 65 percent of the total survey sample said they would support the library bond being extended to pay for the rec center.
"There's some good information in there," Curtis said. "When we put dollars in it, there was a drastic shift."
A homeowner with a $150,000 home pays $55.85 in taxes each year for the library bond, Chief Administrative Officer Wayne Parker said. After 2011, the city will owe $4.7 million on that bond but has $3.5 million set aside to pay it off. Extending the bond 25 years would net about $26 million in revenue for a rec center.
The feasibility study completed in the fall showed that the best rec center the city could build would cost about $38 million. Parker said the city could look for other funding alternatives, they could require the groups who sponsor money-losing activities to do their own fundraising or they could start cutting.
"Can you get down to 26? I don't know," he said.
Curtis said the question would be decided by a vote, either in June or November.
There was, though, more to the survey. Two other somewhat related questions seemed to present something of a dichotomy. One asked residents to judge the statement, "Provo is a safe place to live." Only 6 percent did not agree. The next statement was, "Provo has a gang problem." Two-thirds of respondents agreed. The questions almost seem to be opposite, yet more than half of residents who said Provo is safe also said Provo has a gang problem.
That indicates to Curtis that residents really do feel safe in Provo but are not ignoring the problems.
"There are a lot of residents here that feel like we do, which I think is very interesting," he said.
Gang activity in Provo was a major point of contention during the campaign; Curtis said his focus on it came about because people talked to him about the problem, which the survey backed up. He did not think that the opposite causal relationship -- that people now thought gangs were a problem because he'd talked so much about it -- was the case.
"My experience from the campaign trail is they all knew it," he said.
To see more survey results, go to www.provo.org and click on the Community Dashboard link.
• Heidi Toth can be reached at (801) 344-2556 or htoth@heraldextra.com
