The City of SeaTac is working to enhance its current accountability and transparency practices. In the past, the City has implemented many programs that have assisted with responding to questions and concerns from the public.

In order to continue improving these programs, an internal improvement process team has been created. The purpose of this team is to ensure that the City’s policies/processes capitalize on its efforts in order to increase the level of public trust.

The process improvement team conducted a survey about the community’s experiences interacting with city staff and accessing online resources for services and information. The survey was available November 1 – 21. Ten people responded to the survey. The results are not statistically valid; however, we felt it was important to reach out to the community and obtain a benchmark for activities moving forward.

The results are below:

1. How frequently do you use the City of SeaTac website to find information about City services?
a. Daily 2
b. Weekly 2
c. Monthly 5
d. Yearly 1

2. Have you used the City’s eNotification service to be automatically notified of information important to you?
a. Yes 8
b. No 2

3. Have you used the City’s Click ‘n Request service on the website or phone app. for reporting issues in the City?
a. Yes 7
b. No 3

4. How easy is it for you find information you are looking for on the City of SeaTac website?
a. Easy 1
b. Somewhat easy 3
c. Somewhat difficult 6
d. Difficult 0

5. How frequently do you contact City of SeaTac staff for information about City services?
a. Daily 0
b. Weekly 1
c. Monthly 4
d. Yearly 4
e. No Response 1

6. How easy is it for you to find information you are looking for by contacting City staff?
a. Easy 3
b. Somewhat easy 5
c. Somewhat difficult 2
d. Difficult 0

7. What areas do you feel the City of SeaTac should focus on to increase transparency and accountability? (Note: The City will not be able to implement all suggestions, however all responses will be taken into consideration.) Note: Two respondents did not answer this question. The text below show the responses as they were entered into the survey.
a. Timliness of info More city mailings on timely info All city affairs posted on the city calendar All council committee meetings posted on the city calendar.
b. The City Council should NEVER increase taxes without a vote from the SeaTac citizens, and without providing multiple opportunities for the average working citizen to attend meetings to find out why taxes are being raised. The City Council should also adopt a system like POG utilized during Gary Locke's administration to rethink how we spend funds and if there is a return on investment that validates the cost.
c. Over staffing
d. Provide more meaningful descriptions of Voucher Requests. Show monies received by City identified by their purpose, i.e. $xxx dollars rec'd for Youth Tour, Fencing Class, etc. These should use the same description used on the Vouchers where payments for those activities are shown, etc. Ditto for parking taxes and expenditures, etc. This is all hidden from the citizens and should not be! Also, show staff labor and expenses (Police/Fire as well as City staff) associated with various City activities, which is currently never shown to citizens.
e. Council should be much more transparent when raising taxes and should be more fically accountable to the citizens of Seatac.
f. the city of seatac used to be among the most well-funded cities with a surplus in tax revenue, where did all that money go? we need itemized receipts from anyone spending public funds, especially the entire seatac city staff.
g. Notify all citizens of upcoming City Counsel issues that would directly affect the citizens by a method other than posting on the city website. Because this is a very low income area, many families probably do not have access to a computer or internet access, so are not aware of these issues. The most recent example of this is the 6% utility tax, which was not made known to anyone except one who may have just happened to run across the information the very weekend it was posted. Most citizens, therefore, were in the dark. This type of activity blatantly lacks transparency and, frankly, enrages the very citizens the City of SeaTac is supposed to be working for.
h. Web site navigation is incredibly difficult and in addition to far too many places to look, items aren't always in what one might deem the most obvious place to look. I would suggest re-organizging categories from scratch and assessing what information needs to be highlighted based on relevance to people w/ different interest levels.