By Joseph A. Curtatone

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries and letters to the Editor of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

I talk a lot about our mission of making Somerville a great place to live, work, play and raise a family, and there are good reasons why. If you live in a great neighborhood and have a good job and lead an active, engaged lifestyle and are able to raise your children in a stimulating environment, then you’re likely to be happy. I mean, that’s the American dream isn’t it? If you put in the work, you can have a dignified, rewarding life.

Our country was founded on the principle that everyone has the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So happiness is not some throwaway line or frivolous goal. It’s an important factor in quality of life, which is why it was baked right into our Declaration of Independence. That’s why we continue to survey Somerville residents about their happiness. It matters and your local government should be doing its best to help you lead a happier life.

Obviously, local government (or any level of government) can’t affect every aspect of your happiness because government services don’t touch every area of your life. Yet we should understand the factors that go into making you happier that we can influence. Good schools, safe streets, effective public services and an attractive community are among them. Everybody in Somerville deserves those things and they need to be core competencies for local government. Your satisfaction with how we deliver those services matters too.

That’s why it’s so gratifying to see the overall happiness score in our survey climb to 7.8, out of 10. Previous surveys averaged 7.5 and 7.7. The highest scores went to city satisfaction and civic pride. We’re pretty happy to see that we’re inching in the right direction. That doesn’t mean everything is perfect and that we’re all overwhelmed with joy, but Somerville residents generally like how life is treating them.

Two of the areas in local government that got high marks were community events and information about City services. We’ve put a lot of effort into both of those areas. When it comes to community events, Somerville is not blessed with a lot of geography. We don’t have large public spaces and recreational areas. We have to make our own fun. Arts and open streets events, farmers markets, summer movies and holiday parades and celebrations enrich our community. We make sure we’ve got a lot going on inside our 4.1 square miles, and that effort brings us together as a community, builds our pride, showcases our artists, and provides a whole lot of free arts, culture and entertainment for everyone.

Living in Somerville also means you never have to wonder about what’s going on with City services. You are a 311 call or email or direct message away from getting the answer. We have a 24/7/365 system designed to make sure whatever information you want is available to you whether its via our website, social media, or our 311 call center. Jackie Rossetti’s robo calls are so popular someone recently wrote  a song about them and others have sent her flowers. Our SomerViva team puts out all our info in three languages to ensure no one is left out. We invest in keeping you informed because information access is good government in action. In Somerville, you can always contact a human being who will get you an answer by phone, email, Facebook post or tweet. I am not surprised to see high levels of satisfaction with our public information system.

Yet we don’t just send out a happiness survey to get pats on the back for our successes. We truly want to understand the issues that our residents are struggling with. Satisfaction with city services in three areas did decline slightly. Trust in the police decreased from 3.9 to 3.75 out of 5 and we suspect this reflects national issues around policing rather than specific local experiences, but we will keep an eye on this going forward. Meanwhile, we will continue our investments in the police programs that have been so positively received here including community policing, de-escalation training, and jail diversion programs for persons with mental health or drug addiction issues.

Satisfaction with the public schools also declined slightly from 3.5 to 3.3 out of 5. Though this amount of decline is not considered statistically significant, we will still monitor going forward if this is a trend or an anomaly. Without question, we will also continue our investments in the schools and to build on the phenomenal gains our students have made in the past decade. Just this week we announced our partnership with Harvard’s By All Means educational program, which aims to take an innovative approach to closing achievement gaps associated with socioeconomic status. And we announced the construction of a Fab Lab at the high school that will prepare students for the high-tech jobs of the innovation economy. Through investments in the basics from language arts, science and math to enrichment programs, arts and recreation, we are working to educate the whole child and the survey will help us measure satisfaction with that.

Finally, the biggest issue identified in the survey is the cost of housing. While we knew that was a problem, the happiness survey provides us with a baseline measure for the level of concern in our community. Housing costs scored a 2.6 out of 5, which put them right at the tipping point. As I’ve mentioned before, this is a difficult issue for one small city to tackle by itself. We are up against regional market forces here. Greater Boston needs 435,000 new housing units built in the next 25 years to keep up with demand and that will require a regional solution.

Here in Somerville, though we are already at work. City Hall does not have a direct say in the private housing market, but we do not intend to sit by helplessly as prices rise. We have a slate of existing affordable housing initiatives and the Sustainable Neighborhoods Working Group has proposed new, bold efforts that we are currently reviewing. The happiness survey may not be needed to discover that housing costs are a concern, but it does help justify that we as a city pour our energies into making sure that the people who want to stay here can stay here – and the survey will provide another tool for tracking our progress.

We are deadly serious about happiness. No matter how high we score in any one area, there is always room for improvement. The old song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” didn’t get it quite right. Our job is to worry so that you can be happy.