MONROE — Monroe, here is what you’ve said you want for the city’s future.
You want to retain a small-town feel while having shops, dining and entertainment easily within reach. You want it to be safe from crime, and you want it family-friendly and neighborly.
A “beautiful small town with big town amenities,” is how one person put it.
Access to nature and good parks are big draws for why people are moving to Monroe.
Monroe’s affordability, proximity to bigger cities and a sense of community are what’s having people stay, survey results show.
The city’s recent Imagine Monroe survey is the largest public survey it has conducted in at least 10 years.
Parks and nature ranked among the highest boons of what residents love most today. Small businesses and the sense of calm ranked highly, too.
The survey collected 1,300 responses from people inside and outside of city limits. Of these, about 5 percent of the town, or roughly 975 of 20,000 city residents, filled out the survey. Not that Monroe tried to reach everyone: It did extensive outreach and advertising, including mailing notices to every resident and advertising for comments. The surveys were in both English and Spanish.
On Monroe’s future, half of the people who responded said they’d like to worry less about crime. A majority also want to continue to enjoy parks and trails and the city’s natural areas. Visiting a thriving downtown also ranked highly.
Lack of entertainment and parking and job opportunities ranked as some of the biggest things people are currently dissatisfied with the city.
Traffic also ranked high on the problem list. People in a focus group also mentioned fireworks noise (the city allows fireworks on holidays) and lack of crosswalks as issues.
City leaders will refer to the survey results showing what the public wants to set its principles in shaping city policies.
A 20-member sounding board is developing a vision statement that will be presented to the City Council later this month. The vision statement will be used as a reference point when city leaders make future policy decisions.
Focus group meetings found that holding on to the city’s small-town feel, while Monroe continues growing in population, is important. A report on focus group interviews among long-term residents said people were concerned about characterizing the city as being in transition to becoming a regional city at the loss of having small town values.
Separately, the sounding board of 20 community leaders raised caution on stating the phrase “small town” in the statement as it carries unwanted connotations.
“Age groups were fairly evenly distributed: 10.9 percent were over 65 years old; 16.7 percent between 55-64 years old; 22.8 percent between 45-54 years old; 26.1 percent between 35-44 years old; and 15.1 percent between 25-34 years old,” according to the city. “The survey respondents were also evenly distributed based on the number of years they have lived in Monroe: 27.4 percent 20+ years; 21 percent 11-20 years; 14.4 percent 6-10 years; 26 percent 1-5 years; and 4.9 percent less than one year.”
More than 70 percent of survey-takers lived in town.
“From a perspective of who we wanted to hear from, we got a wide variety,” city administrator Deborah Knight said in presenting the results at the Aug. 17 City Council meeting.
About 70 percent of the survey respondents were white while less than 10 percent were Latinx.
More than seven in 10 survey-takers have households comprised of couples, roommates or small families.
The full summary of results are available to read at www.tinyurl.com/imaginemonroeresults
