Carrboro ranked in top 10 percent of U.S. local governments, receives national award

Earlier this month, Carrboro received the national Leading the Way Award, recognizing its quality performance in overall quality of services, customer service and usage of public funding.

The award was presented by ETC Institute — an organization that gathers data on local government satisfaction — following its DirectionFinder Survey, which measures resident satisfaction, issued earlier this year.

The survey, created in 1999, has been issued to almost two million people across the United States, though this is the first year ETC Institute has formally recognized its top performers.

Other North Carolina towns won a Leading the Way Award too, including Hillsborough, Concord and Holly Springs. Carrboro Communications Director Catherine Lazorko said Durham and Chapel Hill also participated in the survey this year.

Carrboro outpaced national averages by more than 20 percent in different sections of the survey including racial equity advancement, public works and police services.

Lazorko said the survey was included in Carrboro's town budget this year and ETC Institute worked closely with the communications department to develop the survey.

“We work to ensure that our questions are useful and that they would provide good measures for departments and services,” she said. 

The survey was randomly issued by mail to 2,000 residents and the town received 407 responses, Carrboro Town Manager Patrice Toney said.

To encourage more respondents, ETC Institute followed up with residents after ten days by calling and texting links to the online version of the survey, Lazorko said.

98 percent of the residents surveyed said Carrboro was a good place to live and raise children, and 96 percent said they feel welcome in the community — the same result as the town’s previous survey, which was issued in 2022. 

“[It] is tremendous when community residents understand and value their tax dollars and know that we are actually putting it to work that ultimately benefits the community,” Toney said. 

Some of the services mentioned included fire services and public works, which both scored above 90 percent in satisfaction.  Others included police services and recreational and cultural programs, which received 83 and 84 percent satisfaction rates. 

This year’s survey allowed for more open-ended questions and comments concerning parking costs, improving bike lane infrastructure, sidewalk availability and affordable housing. 

“I've lived in Carrboro for over 11 years, and these prices mean that I will have to leave the community I love because our family is getting too big for an apartment," an anonymous comment on the survey said. "We can't afford to rent [or] buy a house in this area. Carrboro has effectively told my family that it doesn't want us here anymore."

Carrboro resident Nick Lytle said the Town has been responsive to community concerns.

He said that oftentimes, contributing input to the Town is most convenient for those who have time to do so, which can skew results.

“It's important to be able to have other avenues to get more of a representative sample of the Town, especially toward individuals who tend to not be represented socioeconomically in the decision making of the town,” he said. 

The Town plans to continue conducting resident satisfaction surveys every two years, Lazorko said. 

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