Survey: Dayton a good place to live The majority of Dayton residents who participated are satisfied with the city and services offered.

DAYTON -- Most residents feel Dayton is a good place to live andthat services they receive are comparable to those offered in thesuburbs.

Most of the residents who participated -- 73.8 percent -- havelived in the city for 16 years or more.

City leaders say they'll use the survey to make planningdecisions. Here are some of the results:

Police

The police department got high marks with 79.4 percent of theresidents saying they were satisfied with services. Of those, 46.7percent were very satisfied, the highest percentage reported since1997.

But an increasing number of residents are worried about crime intheir neighborhoods. Respondents who have been the victim of a crimerose from 9.5 percent in 1999 to 16.3 percent.

Residents said drug sales were a leading neighborhood crimeproblem followed by burglary, loud radios, juvenile crime, trafficand prostitution.

Priority boards

Consolidating priority boards has been a hot topic since 2004,when the city met strong opposition to relocating the SouthwestPriority Board outside of its coverage area. According to the survey,53.1 percent of the residents preferred priority board offices to bein their neighborhoods.

Broken down by priority board, residents of the Southwest PriorityBoard most strongly felt the site office needed to be in theirneighborhood. The northern section of the Northeast Priority Boardcared the least where the office was located.

Recreation center

Several questions dealt with big dollar issues facing Dayton suchas whether residents are satisfied with the city's neighborhoodrecreation centers and if they would support a new RecPlex.

Nearly two-thirds -- about 65.1 percent -- said the city'srecreation centers are adequate, but 53.7 percent said they would bewilling to pay an annual membership to a recreation center.

Residents were split, however, on how much they would be willingto pay annually. Fifty-three percent said they'd pay $1 to $50 whilejust 4.6 percent said they'd pay $151 to $200 per year.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2362 orjosmith@DaytonDailyNews.com.

Survey results

A survey of 1,757 Dayton residents by the Center for Urban andPublic Affairs at Wright State University found:

Improvements 72.5% are satisfied with the city of Dayton as aplace to live.

More than 90% are satisfied with city services.

53% -- compared to 49% in 2003-04 -- have Internet access and wantto access city services online.

94% who had contact with a city employee say they were treatedwith respect.

Needs work

18% believe race relations have gotten worse over the past threeyears and 23.9% believe race relations are improving.

47.6% said their neighborhood is an excellent or good place toraise children. This percentage is significantly lower than inprevious years, falling from 58.5% in 1997 and 51.5% in 2003-04.

*Participants were selected at random with representatives fromall priority boards. *The survey has a margin of sampling error ofplus or minus 1.6 percentage points for the city as a whole and 5percent for each priority board. Source: City of Dayton, Ohio PublicOpinion Survey 2005-06