Residents Are Road Worriers, Santa Clarita Opinion Poll Says

Santa Clarita residents love their city. They just hate driving its streets.

When asked in a recent opinion poll to name Santa Clarita’s most important problem, half of those interviewed picked traffic congestion. Nearly 96% of the respondents described the traffic problem as either “very serious” or “somewhat serious.”

The response astounded pollster and attorney Richard L. Wirthlin. “I know of no question where you’ll get 96%, unless it’s whether they hate the Ayatollah Khomeini,” he said.

Growth was also a major concern, listed by 31% of the respondents as the city’s worst woe. But despite these complaints, nine of every 10 respondents also said they are satisfied with the quality of life in Los Angeles County’s newest city.

“We learned that people here are very happy,” said Wirthlin, who directed the poll with Reed Hyde, a computer specialist with IBM.

Wirthlin and Hyde, both Santa Clarita natives, said they previously had designed opinion polls for the American Bar Assn. and the city of Springville, Utah. They donated their services to the city after learning a few months ago that the City Council wanted to conduct an opinion survey.

Wirthlin said 400 households, selected by computer to represent a cross-section of the Santa Clarita Valley’s 120,000 residents, were surveyed in telephone interviews between July 12 and 15. Most respondents live within the city, but a few reside in neighboring unincorporated areas.

Wirthlin, who presented the poll’s results to the council Thursday, said 100 volunteers received an hour of training before conducting the 65-question interviews. Hyde said the poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 5%.

Response Expected

Council members and the pollsters had predicted before the poll was taken that citizens would list traffic and growth as their major concerns. Even so, the pollsters were surprised by the “near-uniformity of opinion” expressed by citizens, Wirthlin said.

The poll found that 90% of the respondents favored “adopting a no-growth or limited growth city policy,” with 61% strongly favoring such a policy. The respondents were willing to make exceptions, however. By a 2-to-1 margin, they supported spending city funds to attract a regional shopping mall or major discount store to the area.

Despite their complaints, 87% of those responding to the poll said they were satisfied with living in the city. Only 10% said they were dissatisfied.

The survey also found that 87% of the respondents would prefer having an elected mayor. Asked to assess the performance of the City Council as a whole, 62% of those surveyed said the council did a good or fair job overall. A large group, 29%, had no opinion.

The message, Wirthlin said, is that residents are willing to give the new council a chance to get organized.

Only 3% of those polled gave the council a poor rating, but, “that will fluctuate with time,” Wirthlin predicted.