Citizens’ trust in City Council and local government declined in Steamboat Springs compared to 2022, according to the city’s 2024 community survey.

Presented to council members last week, the results showed only 27% of respondents indicated they held confidence in City Council, while 30% thought the city was doing “a good job of matching expenditures to community priorities.”

Half of those who took the survey thought the city was performing positively with regards to openness and transparency.

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“What you see in the community survey, I think, is the result of the previous council and the dysfunction of the Brown Ranch and the public outreach the first time,” said council member Michael Buccino, who was first elected in 2019.

“Clearly, there is a lack of trust from the Brown Ranch vote,” he added. “And the City Council majority pushed it through, and the citizens majority won and overturned it, and so I think there was just an awareness of the citizens of the council’s role at that point and they did not agree.”

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This year’s community survey is the eighth conducted by the city since 1999, allowing local officials and city staff to analyze and compare previous results, both internally and between so-called “benchmark communities,” with the purpose of compiling statistically significant data that can be used to inform policy decisions.

The six-page survey was sent to a random sample of 2,000 Steamboat residents based on voter registration lists. Respondents could either fill out the survey by hand or use an online option. Both methods were available in both English and Spanish.

Beyond questions of trust in local government, the survey gathered opinions on a range of topics including local recreation, planning and development, cost of living and quality of life.

The survey also compiled feedback on how to tackle the local affordable housing crisis.

Seven in 10 respondents supported requiring commercial developers to contribute to affordable housing, according to the results; 85% said they would support incentives for the construction of accessory dwelling units; and 82% indicated they would support incentives aimed at converting short-term rentals into long-term rentals.

Erin Caldwell, a research principal for Polco, the Madison, Wisconsin-based firm hired to conduct the survey, walked council members through the methodology and key findings.

The survey was conducted between April 22 and June 20 and received 579 responses, according to Caldwell, who added the “statistically valid survey” posted a 95% confidence interval with a 4% margin of error and the responses were weighted based on certain demographics.

The results show 7% of the respondents have lived in Steamboat for less than two years, 18% for between 2-5 years and 25% for more than five years, according to Caldwell.

“We know there are always some individuals who are more likely to respond to a survey than others, so we statistically weight the survey responses to reflect the voter demographics,” said Caldwell.

“For example, we know that younger people are less likely to respond than older people so what we do is we give more weight to younger respondents and less to older respondents, so we get that right balance,” she added.

When compared to the city’s 2022 survey, responses from this year saw only two questions receive a more positive rating, with respondents giving higher scores for their opinion of the city’s short-term rental enforcement and on what they consider a “vibrant mountain base commercial area.”

In addition to the drop in confidence in City Council, attitudes over the city’s street repair performance dropped by 19% compared to 2022.

The overall quality of new development in the city and the quality of city services dropped 14%, according to the survey, and trust in the openness and transparency of city government declined 12%.

Despite the dips, Caldwell explained that ratings for government performance matched pandemic-related trends seen across Colorado and nationwide and remained “generally positive.”

“There was something that happened with the surveys that were conducted during the pandemic. People, I think, that sense of emergency kind of gave people a greater appreciation for the local government really stepping up to help with things and there was a halo effect,” she said.

For example, the city’s 2015 survey showed 73% of respondents providing positive approval for the city’s overall customer service. That number jumped to 85% in 2020. In 2024, the survey showed it to be back at 73%.

In 2020, 50% of survey respondents signaled positive feelings over the city’s openness and transparency compared to 28% in 2015. The survey showed 36% of those who took the survey this year approved of the city’s transparency.

And 48% percent of respondents in 2020 expressed confidence in City Council compared to 24% in 2015. This year, 27% of respondents signaled approval for the local government body this year.

“For those government performance ones … they declined because there was this pandemic, or feel-good bump, that happened. But basically, all of those sort of just returned to base,” added Caldwell.

Council members accepted the survey results presented by Caldwell last week and formed a plan to discuss the results at upcoming work sessions. The drop in confidence in City Council and other government performance findings were of particular importance to council members including Amy Dickson.

“I understand the COVID bump, but I think this is an area we need to work on as council members,” said Dickson.

“At some point we as a council need to talk about these results and I don’t want to focus on anything else other than what directly relates to us, which to me right now is openness and transparency and the confidence in City Council,” she added. “What are we doing to move that needle? Even if we are where we were before COVID, it is not OK.”