If you call a big business or buy something online, the interaction will invariably result in a request for you to “stay on the line to take part in a brief survey” or an email in which you are asked to “tell us how we’re doing.”
At the end of Monday night’s Pine Bluff City Council meeting, the public was treated to the results of a similar survey, and answers the public gave were sobering.
The reason for the survey was a level of dissatisfaction with the way things are. As one of the organizers, Kymara Seals, said: “You get fed up.”
Yes, one does. The point in time that got Seals moving was in August when there was a wee-hour-of-the-morning shooting that injured seven people. How no one got killed is beyond us. And then within a month, there were three homicides in one day, followed the next month by the shooting death of a city police officer, Kevin Collins.
Seals got together with other like-minded folks in town, rounded up some volunteers and started gathering information. Good for her — and them. The results, however, will likely not make it into the chamber newsletter.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Forty percent of the respondents said they felt as if the city was unsafe, and 1 in 5 — about 20% — said they didn’t feel safe in their own homes.
Asked to react to the statement that Pine Bluff is a clean and attractive community, 7 out of 10 said they disagreed.
“Honey, let’s go for a stroll.” Apparently that is not something one would hear from many Pine Bluff residents after the sun goes down, as 3 out of 4 said they did not feel safe walking at night. And more than 60% said they felt safe in their homes — but only during the day.
Moving around at all in Pine Bluff also presented its own problems as more than 7 out of 10 respondents said that, because of crime, they had changed or limited what they had planned or wanted to do.
Asked to react to the statement that Pine Bluff offers a good quality of life, almost 46% disagreed.
When a corporation does reach out and ask for a survey, one of the questions that is always asked is: would you recommend us to your friends and family? Based on the survey, we’re thinking the answer to that question would be “uh, no.”
Much of this survey was done via social media, so we’re guessing that it would not hold up to statistical scrutiny. But almost 800 people filled out the survey, and 1,000 gave their thoughts. That’s a lot of people, and many of them have been in the city for decades. That means they come by their opinions through years of breathing the Pine Bluff air, however smelly that might be at times, and hearing the rat-a-tat of gunfire that punctuates the quiet of many evenings.
Seals and company have more planned.
“This is just phase one,” she said after the survey results were released. “We’re coming with recommendations for phase two.” We applaud the group’s pluck for pulling this together.
We can’t say there’s much here that comes as a surprise, although to see that so many people think the same way is rather breathtaking. As difficult as it is to sift through the results, being exposed to them is nothing short of holding up a giant mirror to ourselves. Right now, the image is not pretty. Perhaps we have it within us to change.