There's something wrong with Market Dimensions' City of Vancouver Budget Survey Report

In preparation for a discussion re the forthcoming City of Vancouver budget deliberations on Bill Good's CKNW Civic Affairs Panel, I decided to read the Budget Survey Report commissioned by the city. I was suprised by some of the statements in the Executive Summary.

For example, on page 7, the Exec Summary says residents think the city should pay more attention to green projects or infrastructure....including placing charging stations in public areas for electric vehicles. For the life of me, I couldn't believe that Vancouver residents thought this was something warranting further attention. So I started to plow through the detailed statistics in the appendix, but never found any clear support for this. But more importantly,

On page 4 it says "after a declining trend in the past two surveys, signs of recovery are evident in residents' perceptions about the change in quality of city services. While 28.1% see a decline, 37.1% think the quality has improved.....

HOWEVER, at the top of page 61, the detailed survey results show that 46% say things are worse or much worse. In fact, whereas during the past 11 years only 4% to 8% said things were much worse, this year 35% said things were much worse. 35%! And yet this is completely ignored in the Executive Summary.

I think there is something wrong with the Executive Summary of this report, and I invite people to review the document themselves and let me know if I am mistaken. And if I am not wrong, then I would like to know why a professional firm would present such a distorted view to the public and City staff and Council. You can find the document at http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20101130/documents/rr1_appendix2.pdf