COLORADO SPRINGS — News 5 is following up on efforts to have safe and secure housing for soldiers living at Fort Carson, after a resident satisfaction survey left something to be desired according to Garrison Commander Colonel Brian Wortinger.
According to Colonel Wortinger, around 25% of residents took part in the recent resident satisfaction survey done in April and May. The housing survey scored a 64% from those participants. Colonel Wortinger said he went through each and every comment they received to learn more about what residents are saying.
Colonel Wortinger put the comments into a few categories, including communication with their private housing partner, Balfour Beatty, about work orders, the value of homes, neighbor behavior, and lingering hail damage. "Between the two hail storms, which are $80 million in damage to the installation, the wind storm the year before that, we're well over $100 million in damage to the installation that touched literally every home on Fort Carson," said Colonel Wortinger.
Colonel Wortinger said the annual resident satisfaction survey followed several town halls, after which they made changes to try and meet housing needs. "What I found particularly good to see is the areas that we focused on beginning in February were the areas where we saw very few negative comments," said Colonel Wortinger.
One of the changes they implemented is reviewing 5% of all work orders. "We're now at over 90% customer satisfaction rate on work orders, where we were significantly lower than that when we started this just a few short months ago," said Colonel Wortinger. He said that change paired with customer service initiatives from Balfour Beatty should bring a higher satisfaction score in the future. Colonel Wortinger also said they have made another change since the town halls, and now the army side of things are present at all move-ins for residents that come onto Fort Carson to make sure they have a clean and safe home.
Colonel Wortinger said safe housing hits close to home for him. "The job we do is very difficult, we ask a lot of our servicemembers, we ask even more of their families, so I certainly take it as a personal responsibility to ensure that we provide the absolute best living environment that we can," said Colonel Wortinger.
He also mentioned there were other issues raised by residents, including improving playgrounds, parking, and roads. Colonel Wortinger said the negative comments were balanced out by the positive as well.
