Redwood City residents ranked safety and economy as the most important categories for livability, while inclusivity and engagement were the least important, scoring just over 60%, followed by health and wellness.
That’s according to the results of a community survey shared with the Redwood City Council on Monday, when council members heard from about 280 residents who responded to a fall poll, which asked them to rate the city’s livability and rank 10 categories by importance and quality.
Community input helps inform budgetary recommendations, service priorities, policies, and long-term plans, and measures progress, Deputy City Manager Jennifer Yamaguma said at the meeting.
Since the last survey sent in 2023, city governance, in terms of “being honest” and “open and transparent,” and “informing residents about issues,” all improved in their ratings. So did “valuing/respecting residents from diverse backgrounds,” at 78%, which is above the national benchmark, and especially pleased Mayor Elmer Martínez Saballos, who said, “especially in these times,” that’s “music to my ears.”
While the 2025 survey was sent to 3,000 randomly selected Redwood City residents in September and remained open until mid-November, less than 300 responded, a 9% response rate, just under the national average.
The survey addressed 10 categories of “livability”: inclusivity and engagement; community design; economy; mobility; utilities; parks and recreation; safety; natural environment; health and wellness; and education, arts, and culture. Respondents had to rank the “importance” and local “quality” of them, respectively.
Government transparency and civic respect scored highly in quality, while safety and mobility did not.
For quality, parks and recreation ranked highest at 70%, while mobility ranked lowest at 56%. Mobility also had the largest gap between quality and importance, scoring about 25% higher in importance than in quality. Nonetheless, “ease of walking” scores have increased since the 2023 survey.
Safety had the largest gap, with residents reporting it scores about 60% on quality but 90% on importance. Property crime was the safety category that most residents ranked lowest, at 63%. When asked how comfortable residents feel about contacting the Redwood City Police Department in an emergency, 87% said they were comfortable, and 11% said they were not.
The survey was conducted through Polco, a statistical analysis company that gathers and processes resident and employee feedback for local governments. The group merged with the National Research Center in 2019, which is best known for its benchmarking surveys, such as the National Employment Survey.
As part of its National Community Survey program, Polco compared the results of roughly 400 communities across the nation to Redwood City’s results. Seven items scored higher than the national benchmark, 10 were lower, and just over 100 received similar ratings.
That said, only 14% of residents are satisfied with cost of living, which is lower than the national average. About one in 10 respondents said “meeting housing needs for people in all income levels” is “not at all” important.
The City Council expressed excitement about the community survey but offered many suggestions for refining Polco’s methodology moving forward.
Many were concerned about the lack of demographic representation of survey respondents, even though Polco tried to account for this imbalance by weighting the answers of underrepresented participants.
Over half of respondents were 55 years old and up, versus just 13% between the ages of 18-34. Moreover, only 14% of respondents identified as Hispanic, even though the city has a Hispanic population of over 35%, which is more than double. Also, 65% of respondents own their homes in Redwood City, rather than rent.
Council member Isabella Chu called for a heat map that snapshots the geographic distribution of respondents, to better understand the makeup of those surveyed, and which regions the city needs to work harder to reach with future surveys. The mayor nodded in assent.
In pushing for greater engagement of the Spanish-speaking community, the mayor asked the deputy city manager to incentivize respondents with gift cards like “in the nonprofit world.”
Council member Marcella Padilla added that “not only do we want to think about who’s taking the survey,” but also “who isn’t. She said, even though many respondents selected “I don’t know” to some questions, she’d like to see the survey company include those responses in their analysis because they’re “valuable too.”
An open participation survey was made available to community members online and by mail, and it had 290 responses. Polco did not present its findings from the open participation survey to the council members, prompting Council member Chris Sturken to request that the company analyze the survey responses as well. He’d also like to see a narrative response format in the surveys going forward.
Despite some indicators that certain aspects of life in Redwood City have gotten worse since the last survey, some of the council members were satisfied with the results.
Vice Mayor Kaia Eakin, for one, celebrated the increase in community ratings on government transparency, inclusivity and the downtown vibrancy, calling it wonderful” and said, “I also think that we know our community really well.”
“Of course, we can always do better,” Eakin said, “street cleaning and sidewalks need improvement.” At any rate, she still feels the city “can be on a landing pad right now” in honoring these wins.
But other council members disagreed.
Council member Diane Howard said her takeaway on the topic of affordability is that “maybe people just don’t know enough about what we’re doing,” and said that the council has made major strides toward that goal, as well as toward mobility.
“I hope people stay tuned, because right after this, we’re going to be talking about Jefferson Avenue,” Howard said, in reference to the safety redesign of the road. “I know it’s a major concern to Redwood City that we improve the mobility of our community, and I think we’ve really been working hard on that.”
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