The City of Madison conducted a customer service satisfaction survey for the second year in a row to gauge residents’ responses to the various services available throughout the community.

Rachel Strauch-Nelson, spokesperson for Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, said the results of the survey were very positive and showed a slight improvement from last year’s survey, with more people responding.

“The return rate of the survey was 38 percent, which is positive, since the desired return rate is 30 percent,” Strauch-Nelson said.

She added in the category of overall quality of life in Madison, 93 percent of the responses indicated it was “good or better.”

Andrew Statz, fiscal efficiency auditor for the city, said one area that had a low satisfaction level was street conditions.

“Although 22 percent of respondents said they were ‘very satisfied’ with street conditions, 16 percent of respondents indicated they were ‘very dissatisfied with street conditions’,” Statz said.

Based upon these results, improvements need to be made to the repaving and rebuilding of city roads, the report said.

“The survey is a way for the city to measure residents’ satisfaction with various services so they can continue to improve services throughout the city,” Statz said.

Garbage collection once again had the highest level of satisfaction with 73.8 percent. Other services within the community that received high levels of satisfaction included police and fire service and recycling collection.

Conversely, bus service and lake quality received relatively low ratings for overall satisfaction.

“Lake quality is something that the city does not have a direct hand in. We can’t control runoff from neighboring communities or municipal boundaries,” Statz said.

Residents who returned the survey had an opportunity to write comments regarding services offered as well as other issues that were not addressed in the survey.

One resident indicated their concern with Madison’s lakes. “The lakes around Madison are just awful. The algae is so bad that they need to be cleaned right away.”

Another resident expressed discontent with the bus service. “I don’t like the way the buses run on the weekend. I feel they do need to run like weekdays because it takes longer to get where you have to go and yet you have to wait extra time for a bus. I would love it if the buses ran early and at the same time as weekdays on the weekend.”

Ken Croes, associate director at the UW Survey Center, prepared the mailings for the survey once again this year. One thousand residents are chosen at random from addresses provided by Madison Gas and Electric, Croes said of the selection process.

The first mailing of the survey was sent Sept. 11, and 268 surveys were returned. Another mailing was sent out Oct. 9 to all of the residents of the first mailing that did not respond. 115 surveys were returned during the second mailing.

“The survey was very successful,” Croes said. “My contact information is included on the cover letter of the survey for residents to call if they have questions. This year I did not receive a single phone call.”