Portland Civic Lab
Join
Performance warehouse
Performance MeasureMeasure #100719127Value #103508223

CONTACTING THE CITY

Average rate of Portlanders reporting that it is easy to contact the City government on issues important to them

A complete source packet for this Performance Portland measure: current value, official scale, history, narrative notes, context, and links.

1

Start with value

Use the latest official value and current trend as the first read.

2

Check why it matters

The measure comes from the Portland Insights Survey, which every two years gathers data on Portlanders’ perceptions of City services and priorities.

3

Use the source packet

Continue to the chart, official notes, topic links, source URLs, and full history table.

History

Official values

This chart uses the official actual values cached from ClearImpact. The latest point is highlighted; the table below preserves every raw row.

Export source packet

Latest

2.41

2024

First shown

2.41

2024

Change shown

0

Within visible history

01234520242.41X-axis: reporting period. Y-axis: official actual value on the ClearImpact scale.

Full source history

Every cached ClearImpact row for this measure.

PeriodActualTargetTrend
20242.41—0

Narrative Tabs

Official Performance Portland notes

Why Is This Important?

The measure comes from the Portland Insights Survey, which every two years gathers data on Portlanders’ perceptions of City services and priorities. The survey question "How easy do you feel it is to contact the City on issues important to you?" measures the effectiveness of City communication channels and residents' access to local government. This data helps identify barriers to engagement and opportunities to improve responsiveness, transparency, and trust. Ensuring that all residents, especially those from historically underserved communities, can easily reach the City is essential for ensuring the City is meeting community needs and that the City has built a foundation for meaningful civic engagement.

What Do The Numbers Show?

The average satisfaction rating for this measure was 2.41 on a five-point scale, where 1 means Not at all Easy and 5 means Extremely Easy. This score falls between Slightly Easy (2) and Somewhat Easy (3), indicating that many Portlanders find it only mildly easy to contact the City on issues that matter to them. As shown in the figure below, more than one-third of respondents selected “Don’t know”, suggesting that a significant portion of residents have not tried to contact the City. These “Don’t know” responses were excluded from the average rating. To better understand who is experiencing more or less ease in contacting the City, the data is broken down by demographic groups. While statistically significant differences were found across self-identified race and ethnicity, the actual variation in average scores was relatively small. This question, in its current form, is new to the 2024 Insights Survey. Although a similar question was asked in 2022, changes to the response scale mean the results are not directly comparable. The City intends to include the same question in the 2026 survey, which will allow for tracking changes in public perception over time.

How Did We Arrive at These Numbers?

This measure uses data from the 2024 Portland Insights Survey. Respondents were asked "How easy do you feel it is to contact the City on issues important to you?" Possible responses were : "Extremely Easy", "Moderately Easy", "Somewhat Easy", "Slightly Easy", "Not At All Easy", and "Don’t Know".