Happy Town is &#8230; Lenexa.</p><p>This Johnson County city achieved a higher average level of citizen satisfaction than other local suburbs, according to <em>The Kansas City Star&#8217;s </em>first-ever comparison of citizen surveys.</p><p>Lenexa residents gave their city the highest marks in the metro area in nearly half of the subjects covered in <em>The Star&#8217;s </em>comparison, from overall police protection to parks facilities, from clean streets to managing growth. Overall, 78.9 percent of residents surveyed in that city of 45,000 people were satisfied with all the lifestyle issues and city services <em>The Star </em>considered.</p><p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve very proud of that,&#8221; said Mayor Mike Boehm. &#8220;We&#8217;re being compared to other places that have excellent reputations in the metro area, and for our citizens to have a higher regard for us, that&#8217;s pretty special.&#8221;</p><p>Of course, Lenexa&#8217;s title is only honorary, and <em>The Star&#8217;s </em>analysis is hardly definitive.</p><p>The analysis used an increasingly popular tool by which cities are measuring themselves: the citizen satisfaction survey.</p><p>For the past few years, many suburbs have hired the same Olathe company, the ETC Institute, to poll their residents about how they like the city and how it&#8217;s performing. These surveys use a statistically valid sample of residents and generally ask the same questions.</p><p>Yet ETC does not compare one city&#8217;s results against another city&#8217;s. So to do that, <em>The Star </em>gathered these surveys from 19 area suburbs, from Platte City to Lee&#8217;s Summit on the Missouri side, and from Overland Park to Spring Hill on the Kansas side. (Some notable suburbs have not conducted these surveys, including Prairie Village, Shawnee, Smithville and Leawood, to name a few.)</p><p><em>The Star </em>then compared city-by-city responses to 20 questions that encompassed the main survey subjects &#8212; public safety, parks, streets, leadership and overall perceptions of the city. Satisfaction levels in those 20 questions were then averaged to determine an overall ranking of citizen satisfaction in each suburb.</p><p>In the end, the surveys themselves were scientific, but the newspaper&#8217;s analysis of overall satisfaction was less so. (See box at right.)</p><p>Nevertheless, the analysis yielded several surprises:</p><p>&#8226;A couple of smaller Johnson County burbs beat out the higher-profile cities of Overland Park and Olathe. Mission ended up No. 2 overall, while Merriam was close behind at No. 4.</p><p>Merriam, a city of about four square miles and 11,000 people, topped all other suburbs in residents&#8217; satisfaction with street maintenance.</p><p>&#8220;When a resident calls about a pothole or something, they immediately address the issue,&#8221; said Quinn Bennion, Merriam&#8217;s city administrator for much of this decade before taking the same post last year in Prairie Village.</p><p>&#8226;The top-ranked community on the Missouri side wasn&#8217;t a growing burb but a landlocked one: Gladstone. This Northland city of 27,500 people was No. 3 overall and earned consistently high marks across all categories, such as 83 percent satisfaction with snow removal.</p><p>&#8220;We give a lot of attention to quality-of-life programs &#8212; festivals, snow removal, a newly built community center, even programs for seniors,&#8221; said Mayor Les Smith. &#8220;I tend to think we&#8217;re very well rounded.&#8221;</p><p>&#8226;Generally, a high quality of life doesn&#8217;t necessarily translate into the happiest citizens. Local and national measures of &#8220;best places to live&#8221; routinely rank Lee&#8217;s Summit, Liberty and Overland Park as top local cities. But in terms of citizen satisfaction, Overland Park finished fifth in <em>The Star&#8217;s </em>comparison, while Lee&#8217;s Summit and Liberty ended up below average.