Ninety-seven percent of residents rated the quality of life in St. Louis Park as excellent or good and 95 percent said they feel safe. Only 4 percent of residents said they anticipated moving in the next five years, and 89 percent rated city services as excellent or good.
Survey firm Decision Resources told city officials those ratings are among the highest they have seen in the many Twin Cities communities they have surveyed. Mayor Jeff Jacobs was pleased.
This is one of the biggest reasons I'm happy here:
But Harmening said the city also has a history of setting high standards for resident services and a tradition of working with residents.
Yep, it's true. When I was looking to buy a house 22 years ago, I looked at a lot of places in Minneapolis and St. Louis Park. It was a bit of a buyer's market at that time so I could take my time thinking about a house that maybe needed some work or didn't have a garage or driveway and I could then check out what the options were before making an offer.
That was before all sorts of info was put on the web and I had to contact people in the respective city offices to get answers. The Minneapolis officials were always a pain in the neck to get a hold of and probably the rudest and most unhelpful bureaucrats I had ever had contact with when I did speak to them. The St. Louis Park officials returned my calls and were always pleasant and helpful. I finally stopped looking in Minneapolis and focused strictly on St. Louis Park and not much later I had a house.
St. Louis Park employees are still that way; easy to get a hold of and unfailingly pleasant to work with in my experience. I know a couple of people who might disagree, but they wanted to do some things that were not to code. The city will bend over backwards to try to accomodate people, but they have to enforce the city codes.
When my street and sidewalk was torn up and replaced a couple of years ago it could have been a nightmare. Instead it was done in a way that least inconvenienced my neighbors and I and the project manager was available and kept us well-informed about what was going on the whole time. Every city office I have ever dealt with has had a similar attitude.
It really does make home ownership more pleasant when the city doesn't treat you like you're an adversary.
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