From Staff Reports

Buncombe County is a better place to visit than a place to live, according to the results of the county’s first community survey, which was released to the public during the Feb. 1 meeting of the Buncombe Board of Comissioners. 

The survey of 753 individuals, costing $18,000, was conducted by the ETC Institute, which noted that the participation was 166 percent of the county’s 500-person goal. 

“Because so many people were involved, the survey is ranked at a 95 percent level of confidence, with a 3.5 percent margin of error,” the Asheville Citizen Times reported in a Feb. 3 story.

Both the Citizen Times and Asheville television station WLOS (News 13) led their survey stories with the results to the set of questions addressing public perception of what kind of place Buncombe is for residents and outsiders.

To that end, “the survey showed that 85 percent of respondents see Buncombe as a good or excellent’ place to visit, where 65 percent see is as a good or excellent ‘place to live,’ according to the survey,” the ACT noted.

What’s more, “78 percent of respondents see Buncombe as a good or excellent ‘place to play’ and 62 percent see it as a ‘place to retire.’”

Based on national benchmarks measured by the ETC, Buncome exceeds the national avarage as “a place to visit” by more than 25 percent.

“However, it is below the national average as ‘a place to live’ by about 11 percent,” the ACT reported.

The 35-question survey form, spanning seven pages, was mailed to random samples of households in late 2021 and later completed on paper forms, online and by phone — and was devisd to evaluate the level of service the Buncombe government provides residents and to better undertand the needs of the community.

On Feb. 11, the Daily Planet emailed Kit Cramer, president and CEO of the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, seeking her response to the survey, but the newspaper did not hear back from her by its mid-morning Feb. 14 press deadline.

Meanwhile, Matt Baker, who focuses on data analysis with the county’s strategy and innovation department, was quoted by the ACT as telling the commeissioners:

“We wanted to really look at percentages in the county as a place. There’s room for improvements in a number of places, to be quite honest, and a lot of those are interconnected.

“While we got very high marks as a place to visit, it may be more difficult to live here.”

While Baker admitted that the cost of living in the area may be well-known, he said that “when you hear it so directly and uniformly from residents, it really hammers that home,” the ACT noted.

The commissioners, who received the survey results on Jan. 28, already had voted to make affordable housing its top priority for 2022 at a December 2021 budget retreat.