Insights From the 2025 Community Survey on the Importance of City Services and Satisfaction with City Government
Summary
The community survey focused on the services and policies of the general government. A representative sample of 400 residents was randomly selected to answer 60 questions on the importance of various City services and policies and their satisfaction with them.
94% of respondents rated life in the City as excellent or good, highly valuing the City’s walkability and small-town feel. They cared most about taxes, traffic, and road infrastructure.
Respondents were also generally satisfied with the delivery of services from City government. However, the data suggest that the City needs to do more work on road infrastructure and managing growth and development.
Background
The City contracted with Probolsky Research to conduct a survey of a representative sample of residents to discover the local government policy issues that are important to residents and their satisfaction with services. The survey was conducted between February 13 and 20, 2025, and the results were presented at the March 17, 2025, City Council meeting.
The cost of the survey was $18,750. The City previously engaged Probolsky Research to conduct a similar survey in 2023.
Population sample
The results comprise the responses from a sample of 400 residents. The researchers ensured that the sample characteristics matched the City’s Census data. Probolsky also said that the sample size was sufficient to reflect the entire population of the City (about 15,000) with a +/- 5% error for the types of questions on general satisfaction and importance. (For the statisticians, no confidence interval was given.)
The survey was conducted by phone with a live interviewer (36%) or online (64%), in English (97%), Spanish (2%) or Vietnamese (1%). Data were anonymized.
The survey is available here.
A note on the limits of the survey
This survey primarily gauges satisfaction or dissatisfaction with various City services. It is not intended to go beyond these questions to imply a reason for the source of any dissatisfaction. For example, it does not answer the question whether dissatisfaction of the maintenance of the sidewalk and traffic calming infrastructure can be assuaged by more maintenance. It could just as well have been because of the widening of a sidewalk. On the other hand, satisfaction probably implies happiness with the status quo.
Life is good in the City
94% of respondents rated the quality of life in Falls Church as excellent or good. In open-ended comments, walkability, small-town feel, and the community were listed as the top features that participants liked about living in the City.
This is consistent with over 760 comments submitted on the February-March accessory dwelling (AD) survey where the leading concern about the proposed AD code was its impact on the character of the neighborhood.
What do people care about?
From a given list of issues, respondents selected taxes, traffic, and road conditions as their top issues. The list did not include “Managing Growth” although this issue was added to later questions.
Importance and satisfaction of City services and policies
Respondents were given a list of City services and policies and asked to:
- select the ones that were important to them, and
- select the ones that they were satisfied with.
Researcher Adam Probolsky explained that a large difference in the levels of satisfaction and importance indicates that an area needs more focus. A low satisfaction score coupled with a high importance score may indicate that residents are unhappy with the performance of that service and represents an opportunity for improvement. Ideally, satisfaction should match the importance of a service.
Based on this analysis, the top five focus areas in order of importance are:
- Maintaining sidewalks, cross walks, neighborhood traffic calming
- Maintaining streets and roads
- Managing growth and development
- Fiscal stewardship
- Supporting affordable housing
Road infrastructure
Maintenance of sidewalk, crosswalks, and traffic calming was selected by the highest number (62%) of residents as an important service, yet only 31% of respondents chose it as a service with which they were satisfied. Similarly, the maintenance of roads and streets was the third highest selection (57%) as an important service, yet only 39% of the respondents selected it as a service with which they were satisfied. These large differences highlight these services as possibly needing improvement.
When all respondents were asked specifically about the maintenance of streets, roads, and traffic signals, responses showed a high satisfaction of 70%, although this was down from 79% in 2023. The dissatisfied score also increased over the two years from 21% to 30%. This was the only deterioration of satisfaction from 2023 to 2025 among the 16 services directly evaluated.
This survey does not provide further insight into why 70% of respondents were satisfied with the maintenance of streets and roads and only 39% chose to select it as a service they were satisfied with.
Satisfaction with management of growth and development
The City has seen considerable growth and development in the last two decades. Managing growth and development was cited as important by 53% of the respondents, the fourth highest score. Yet only 20% selected this as an issue with which they were satisfied. This was the largest mismatch of the listed City services.
When asked to gauge their satisfaction on this specific issue, a majority of respondents replied that they were satisfied (55%), but 40% said they were not. This is the highest dissatisfied percentage among the 16 questions on specific services.
This dissatisfaction is also reflected in the feedback from the AD survey where concerns about the increased density and urbanization were a major theme of the comments submitted.
Economic development is also related to growth and development. Here respondents are a little more satisfied (63%) with 25% dissatisfied and 12% unsure. Also, respondents were satisfied with the retail, restaurant, medical, and other professional business options in the City.
Fiscal stewardship
42% of respondents selected fiscal stewardship as an important service of the City government, yet only 19% selected it as a service with which they were satisfied. This mismatch between importance and satisfaction suggests that fiscal stewardship should be a focus area.
A direct question on fiscal stewardship revealed that 16% of respondents were unsure, indicating a lack of understanding or knowledge about the fiscal stewardship issue. Mr. Probolsky suggested that, sometimes, government can improve satisfaction by making people more aware of the work of the government. 60% of respondents were satisfied and 24% dissatisfied.
The results are not statistically different from 2023.
Providing affordable housing
Although affordable housing scored in the middle range of importance to respondents, selected by 37%, only 16% of respondents were satisfied with the City’s efforts to date. This large difference suggests that the City should increase its efforts in this area as well.
When all respondents were asked directly whether the City’s provision of affordable housing was important, 68% rated it important and 29% rated it unimportant. These results fall below the importance of other policy goals such as environmental sustainability (77%); diversity, equity, and inclusion (73%); safe walkable environment (96%); safe bikeable environment (78%); and ample commercial parking (87%).
When all respondents were asked to specifically rate their satisfaction on affordable housing, 39% were satisfied and 35% were dissatisfied while 26% were unsure. With a +/- 5% error, this suggests that respondents were evenly split and a large number undecided.
The importance of some policy goals
Some of the City’s policy goals were included in the survey to assess their importance to residents. Almost all respondents (96%) said it was important to provide a safe walkable environment. The City has completed several projects that focus on sidewalks and traffic calming infrastructure, and several more are in the works.
In second place, 87% of respondents said it was important that the City have ample and available parking in commercial areas. Yet City Council recently passed a zoning amendment to reduce commercial parking requirements. City Council has also approved significant parking reductions for every mixed-use project and every commercial project.
City Hall gets top scores
89% of the respondents were generally satisfied with the services provided by the City, 11% were dissatisfied, and a few were unsure. Mr. Probolsky said this result is unusual in his experience, adding, “We don’t see numbers at this level in most other communities throughout the country – South Carolina, California, Texas, New Jersey.” The other unusual aspect of these results is that the number of “Unsure” is so small. He said this is a strong indicator that “[residents] are really in tune with what’s happening here.”
79% of respondents were satisfied with the value of services they receive for their taxes, but 54% were opposed to raising taxes to pay for increasing costs, resident priorities, or to improve or increase service levels. The 41% who supported increasing taxes viewed infrastructure and roads as the highest need, followed by affordable housing.
66% of respondents have been in contact with a City staff in the preceding 12 months, and of those, 86% thought the interaction was excellent or good.
Satisfaction with City services
Police, parks and trails, library and trash services all received high scores. Respondents were also largely satisfied with the City’s community building efforts, especially through festivals and events.
The City also performed well on communication, including its websites and use of technology to pay bills. Residents largely communicate with the staff by email. 20% of respondents also phone City Hall. 18% said they spoke at public meetings. When asked about the City’s efforts to solicit public input and engage residents in policy and programs, 58% of the respondents rated the City excellent or good, and 34% fair or poor.
Areas where respondents were less knowledgeable, indicated by the percentage of “Unsure” responses, were emergency preparedness, services offered by housing and human services, the City’s affordable housing initiatives, and stormwater mitigation initiatives. This may have led to lower satisfaction scores.
The one service where City staff received a mediocre satisfaction score that cannot be explained by a lack of familiarity was on their management of growth and development. 40% of respondents were dissatisfied, the highest among all the services provided. Only 5% of respondents were unsure.
This dissatisfaction is also reflected in the AD survey where the community was split or strongly disagreed with six out of nine elements of the proposed code changes to grow housing in the City.
References
These documents were provide at the March17, 2025, City Council meeting.
- Community Survey Results Staff Report_v2
- Probolsky Research – City of Falls Church – Community Survey 2025 – Questionnaire – Final
- Probolsky Research – City of Falls Church – Community Survey – Council Results Presentation
The City has a Community Survey webpage with the 2023 and 2025 results, with more detailed tabulations for each survey.
