A look at the survey results. Part one: Your thoughts about the city
Capital projects survey
I’ve been reporting on the potential 2025 ballot question regarding raising property or sales taxes to fund some capital projects. Projects under consideration are a remodel and expansion of the Bob Burger Recreation Center, an expansion and remodel of the Service Center, and a new City Hall.
The city council authorized hiring Magellan Strategies to conduct a poll to gauge public support for either a property tax or a sales tax increase, and the individual projects.
The results of the polling were presented at council’s May 27th workshop.
I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some of the results. I’m going to start with the demographics and questions about residents’ satisfaction with the city in general. I was not polled on this topic.
The council has not made a decision about the ballot question yet.
From the documentation:
“Magellan Strategies is pleased to present the topline results of a survey of 788 residents of the City of Lafayette, CO. The interviews were conducted from April 8th to 22nd, 2025. This survey has a margin of error of +/- 3.43% at the 95 percent confidence interval. The survey data were weighted to represent the demographics of odd-year election turnout in Lafayette.”
SOME DEMOGRAPHICS
RESIDENTS COMMENTS
I am always interested in reading comments from residents when they are given an opportunity to share their thoughts. This is a compilation of those thoughts by Magellan Strategies. I asked for a copy of the document that has them verbatim.
Want to offer more support? Awesome!
Boy, I could write a dissertation on the problems with Lafayette. But first, the good news: Lafayette is not Boulder. And I don't have time to write everything out. Firstly, most of this city is probably white, more women than men, older, and decently well off, as is reflected in the survey. But, what I want to know is: from what class did they grow up, that is, working class, middle class, upper middle class, blue-blood, white collar, blue collar, integrated race-wise area, etc. I am guessing that their social background says a lot about their politics, especially how they look to handle revenue and expenses. Which gets us to the problem: ideology. If the population wants everyone to be treated equally, does it mean in terms of opportunity or in terms of outcome? Do citizens pay for the Rec Center, or the people who use it? Well, in a working-class city, probably the people who use it, but in a socially liberal city, probably the people are taxed for it. Why the diff? To be blunt: because some of us grew up with bootstraps on, and some of us grew up getting whatever they wanted. Why is this a problem? Because using government (and now, even NGOs) has become a way of finessing the welfare of some people over the welfare of other people. Is this about a leak in a swimming pool that was not a well-designed pool in the first place, or is this about the egos of people who want a brand-new, shiny toy? Past generations, knowing and understanding hardships, would agree with my POV, I believe. Only those who haven't struggled with revenue-costs would sign on to impose hardships on some people to satisfy other people.
The City Council is having a Workshop this coming Tuesday at 5:30 pm to consider whether to move forward with a capital projects ballot this year or next year and which project(s)to include. It's a Workshop so there is no public input but it's a very important meeting to attend and get the latest thoughts of City Council on this issue