Odessa is welcoming to people with diverse backgrounds and gets positive marks for job opportunities, according to a Quality of Life survey conducted by Mason-Dixon & Strategy.
This is the third year the survey has been done and it was commissioned by Young Professionals of Odessa, a program of the Odessa Chamber of Commerce.
Kaylie Banda, chairwoman of Young Professionals of Odessa, said surveys were performed in February 2020, August 2021 and September 2022.
Banda said Mason Dixon takes a week and contacts 400 registered voters in the city.
“… They’ll do actual phone calls to citizens asking them the questions that we’ve approved ahead of time. After they conduct their surveys throughout that week, they’ll then compile all of the data … and then they’ll give the report to us. Once we get our hands on the data, that’s when we go out and start road showing this survey,” Banda said.
She added that the firm has found 400 people was “kind of the magic number” because you can get a sufficient variety and the different demographic areas.
“Anything more than that you’re just going to duplicate, so every 400 people, you’re just gonna get the same results so they found that 400 was the magic number,” Banda said.
The organization would like to expand the survey to registered voters in the county, as well.
“But the survey’s pretty expensive with just the city residents as it is, so that’s on our to-do list for next year is to maybe fundraise a little bit and try to get some aid in paying for the survey so that we can expand it to county residents … We want to make sure we’re capturing their perspective as well,” Banda said.
The survey asks participants about 14 qualities of life such as public safety and fighting crime, education, availability of health care and availability of affordable housing.
Respondents are asked if these factors rate positive or negative in the City of Odessa.
“… Things like availability of affordable housing are always going to be real negative because it’s … kind of expensive to live here …,” Banda said.
In the last couple of years, people were overall positive about Odessa being welcoming to people of diverse backgrounds.
“… Another one that always hits very high is job opportunities in your field. Our participants believe that there are a lot of opportunities to be had in their jobs and their careers, so that’s also a very good thing. Our participants are also asked if they believe Odessa as a city is on the right track or the wrong track. Obviously that encompasses a lot of things — education, traffic, it’s everything together,” Banda said.
This year, 53 percent of respondents said Odessa is on the right track. Last year, it was 45%.
Participants are also asked to rate the economic conditions in the city of Odessa.
“This year, we had 49% of our participants say that they feel positively about the economic conditions here. They’re also asked if five years from now, if we think that the economy is going to be better, worse off or about the same, and 38% of them said that it was going to be better, so that’s a good thing,” Banda said.
Respondents are also asked about the most important issues they feel that the City of Odessa is facing.
“We always have a couple reoccurring themes here. The economy is the number one concern this year. Crime was our second concern and then immigration was our third concern, which is a little bit odd,” Banda said.
The answers are likely filtered through people’s experiences, what they see on the news.
The top three issues in 2021 were immigration, the economy and crime.
Mason Dixon gets an even mix of male to female respondents and age groups.
“They even break it down for us by age, income, race and ethnicity; if they have children in school; if they work in the energy industry; their political party identification; and if they’re full-time, part-time, not employed, things like that. They really do an even spread throughout,” Banda said.
She added that they always get a decent number of independent voters, but most are Republican.
“Another thing that we’ve seen reoccurring is that we always get a pretty high number of people not in the energy industry …,” Banda said.
On education, a consistent issue is that a lot people think the schools need improvement or they aren’t good enough. But many of those people don’t have children in school, or they used to have children in school or maybe they haven’t seen the recent improvements.
They may not have children in school yet, or they “hear their friends complain,” Banda said.
Some of the survey results from this year show there was a 55% positivity rate in Odessa being welcoming to diverse backgrounds.
The second quality of life factor was job opportunities in your field where they had a 65% positivity rate.
The third factor was availability of quality health care which got a 47% positivity rate. Banda said that was down from 50% last year.
When the first survey was done in 2020, there was a 61% positivity rate regarding health care. But COVID hit and people lost their jobs and insurance.
The next quality of life factor was public services. There were three factors within that — availability of affordable housing, 25% positivity rate; public safety and crime fighting, also 25% positivity; and quality of public education, 27%.
Also, effective leadership from elected officials, 34% positivity rate and shared vision for job and economic growth, 42% positivity rate.
Getting from place to place without traffic, 29% positivity rate; public transportation, 35% positivity rate; natural beauty and physical setting, 28% positivity rate; vibrant nightlife, restaurants and clubs, 36% positivity rate; availability of cultural opportunities, 34% positivity rate; availability of parks and playgrounds, 51%.
“We always wrap up the survey by talking about these next couple of questions. Our participants are asked if they’re familiar with the plans and the leadership for both economic development and community development,” Banda said.
Fifty-seven (57) percent said they were familiar with community development and 56 percent were familiar with economic development plans.
People were also asked to rate the overall quality of life in Odessa and 50 percent said it was either excellent or good and 50 percent said it was fair or poor.
“So we’re at a 50-50 split. And what’s interesting is our last two surveys have also seen about a 50-50 split on this question. Obviously, we’d rather see more of the excellent- good ratings. But this is a starting point … Hopefully, we (will) see the positive overtake” the negative in the coming years, Banda said.
Over the next five years, people were asked if they think the quality of life will improve, deteriorate or stay the same.
“We have 35% of them that say it’ll improve; 51% said it would stay the same; and 14% said it would deteriorate. If they gave the answer deteriorate, they were asked why do you think that is? Based on the verbal response that they gave the survey company, the survey company categorized their reasons. The top answer was a poor economy and that has to do with the volatility of oil and gas. You could have a job one day and the next day you don’t. The second reason (was) poor job market, so that kind of ties in, and then the third reason was poor leadership,” Banda said.
Other reasons were crime and drugs, 14 percent; oil and gas dependence, 10 percent, poor schools, 7 percent, which was higher last year; lack of culture, 2 percent; environmental fears, 2 percent; not sure, 2 percent; and other, 5 percent.
The last thing that they’re asked is how likely are you to move from Odessa within the next five years.
Fifty-five (55) percent said that they are not likely to move and 45 percent said they were either very likely or somewhat likely to move.
If they gave the response that they were likely to move, they were asked why and the reasons cited were poor job market, poor economy, poor schools and poor leadership.
The last two surveys are up on the Young Professionals of Odessa website: ypodessa.org.
“This obviously highlights a lot of different industries and areas in the Permian Basin and Odessa. We want those decision-making bodies to see how their citizens are feeling about their efforts so that they can say, okay, if that’s how they’re feeling, then we need to tailor our efforts this way; or we need to do this better; or do this more; or do this less. It’s kind of hard for us to spearhead those efforts because we’re just basically the messenger … of the data,” Banda said.
“We want to be part of those efforts if they want the Young Professionals group to be part of it …,” she added.
Young Professionals of Odessa currently has about 160 members.
“We’ve seen a lot of growth in our membership numbers, especially coming back from COVID. COVID was kind of a tough year for us, but our membership numbers continue to increase. We always encourage young professionals, 21 to 40 … to join because those are going to be the leaders of tomorrow, if they’re not already leaders today. It’s our responsibility to help get those people connected to the to the right efforts, to the right people, to the right groups, to help them grow professionally, personally; to help them grow their leadership capacity,” she added.
