Fort Collins survey: residents rate quality of life high but affordability remains top concern

City staff and Polco/National Research Center presented the 2025 Fort Collins Community Survey results to the council, reporting strong positive ratings for quality of life and mobility but persistent concerns about housing and childcare affordability.

The city’s communications and engagement manager, William Bevel, said the 16th annual survey is a key input for “planning and prioritization, work planning and prioritization,” and that the full report is available at fcgov/communitysurvey. Sonya Wythink, executive vice president of data and insights at Polco/NRC, told council the survey collected 921 responses and has a margin of error “plus or minus 3% around your results.”

The nut graf: The survey shows Fort Collins residents continue to give very high marks for their neighborhoods, parks and bicycling — 85% rated ease of bicycle travel positively — and 87% rated Fort Collins as a place to live very good or good. But fewer than 2 in 10 respondents rated availability of affordable, quality childcare and housing as good or very good; housing was the most frequently mentioned priority in an open‑ended question.

Polco/NRC described methodology and benchmarking. Wythink said the city’s results were compared to national and Front Range benchmarks drawn from Polco’s database of roughly 500 communities. She explained the survey combined a probability (scientific) sample and an open‑participation web sample; the city received about 548 responses from the mailed/scientific sample and 373 from the open participation link. Wythink said Polco separately weights and reviews each sample and “we won’t blend them if they're wildly different,” and when blended they are statistically weighted to improve representivity.

Councilmembers pressed staff and Polco on transparency and methodology. Councilmember Olson asked how the open participation sample is blended with the scientific sample, saying, “I just flat out don't get rolling non scientific into the scientific and calling it a scientific survey.” Wythink replied that the organization performs separate weighting, compares the samples for skew, and “we usually actually over‑weight the probability sample” and will not blend when the samples differ meaningfully.

Bevel and councilmembers discussed how the survey will be used. Bevel said survey measures feed the city’s strategy maps and budgeting: “The survey is really one of the important inputs as we go into our strategic planning process.” Councilmembers suggested the survey should be used to inform budget trade‑offs and to track changes over time.

Ending: City staff said they will provide additional detail requested by council, including exact contract cost for the survey vendor, and will make the full dataset and cross‑tabulations available to council and the public. The council indicated the results will be a formal input to strategic planning and the 2026–2030 budgeting cycle.