There’s a Gulf Between the Tasks That Portlanders Value Highest and the Ones They Think the City Does Best

This November is going to be a change election, in more ways than one.

Portland voters will usher in an expanded government unlike any in city history, and do so using ranked-choice voting for the first time. And not a minute too soon, judging by the responses to a survey conducted this spring by the Oregon Values and Beliefs Center: 55% of Portlanders surveyed said they felt the city was on the wrong track, while 27% thought it was moving in the right direction.

The survey, conducted between May 17 and June 18 of 1,114 respondents, offers a clue why so many residents are dissatisfied: There’s a stark contrast between what city services people think are important and what services they think the city performs well.

While 89% of respondents ranked streets, sidewalks and transportation as the most important service the city provides—it was the top choice—only 30% of respondents thought the quality of that service was acceptable.

The difference between importance and quality was even more drastic for other services. Shelter for homeless people was ranked as the fourth-most-important service, with 82% of respondents saying it was very important or essential. But when it came to rating the quality of the service, only 17% of respondents thought the city was doing its due diligence. On the flip side, public arts and cultural events got the lowest importance rating, but the second-highest quality rating after parks and natural areas.

In other words, most Portlanders think the city excels at services that don’t matter so much and fails at the tasks that are most crucial.

“Either the city is misunderstanding the services that are important to people, and so the quality isn’t being delivered, or we just aren’t able to deliver the quality that people think that these services should have,” says Amaury Vogel, executive director of OVBC.

The center is a nonpartisan research nonprofit that recently asked Portlanders more than 70 questions to assess their mood going into a pivotal election. Over the next few weeks, Ballot Buddy will report on the research done by the OVBC about what matters to Portlanders and issues they are thinking about as we round the corner to the upcoming city election.

We start with the gulf between what residents want and what they get.