YUCCA MESA COMMUNITY SURVEY

The Coalition's purpose in creating and administering a Community Survey was to complete the MSR funded by the Town.  It provided useful and presumptively accurate data, but no one from either the Town of Yucca Valley or the Town's consulting firm actually talked with the residents of the proposed area.  In fact, most Yucca Mesa residents were completely unaware that a Sphere of Influence application existed nor what it meant.

As the Stop Yucca Mesa Annexation Coalition conducted its public education program, community awareness of the sphere/annexation grew rapidly.  To quantify public opinion, survey questions were compiled from review of the Town's MSR, from comments at a petition signature effort at the local Walmart and from Town and County Recreational Planning documents.

When the results were presented at a Town meeting, then Mayor Pro Tem Chad Mayes questioned whether or not the survey was scientific.  The reading level of the survey text, excluding the multiple choice sections (e.g. Agree, Disagree) was tenth grad according to a FOG Index analysis.  The Coalition mailed surveys to all registered voters from a County of San Bernardino Registrar list.  There was sufficient total response to have relatively tight confidence intervals.  The Coalition concluded it was scientific in being a readable survey distributed to the population in question.

The Coalition added one additional note on validity.  We reasoned that survey respondents are the most likely subset of voters to vote.  Therefore, survey results are the best single measure of public sentiment short of a formal, binding vote.  Since the LAFCO memorandum of 1993 revealed that 53% of the Yucca Mesans survey favored being included in the initial incorporation of the Town of Yucca Valley and that in 2009 that percentage had dropped to essentially zero, the 2009 survey serves as a referendum on the Town by its neighbors.  Yucca Mesa residents view how the Town had proceeded in the intervening years negatively.  They do not want to be part of the Town and prefer to live as they have lived as part of the County of San Bernardino.

The survey provides the details.  Sometimes the best plan is not to change things.

View the Yucca Mesa Community Survey HERE.

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