University of Maryland presents 2024 Martin's Additions resident survey; finds overall satisfaction but pockets of concern on zoning and safety

University of Maryland researchers Sean Flower and Sharon Gibbs Cooper presented the 2024 Martin's Additions resident survey to the village council on Jan. 16, 2025, offering a high-level analysis of response patterns and recommendations for future polling.

The research team said they sent 582 invitations via Qualtrics and collected 233 surveys (229 electronic, four paper), of which 205 were completed and 22 partially completed; including starts, they describe the response as about 40 percent. "The opinions and points of view, contained in this report and the presentation are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the village of Martin's Additions," Cooper cautioned.

Key findings presented included strong ratings for the election process (means about 4.3–4.4 on a 1–5 scale, indicating respondents generally agreed elections were fair and easy to navigate) and generally favorable views of communications: monthly newsletters, weekly wrap-ups and email alerts were judged informative by the plurality of respondents. Services such as street snow removal, recycling pickups and trash collection received the highest service-satisfaction scores.

The presentation introduced two new question areas this year. On public safety, about 35 percent of respondents said they had concerns while about 65 percent did not; respondents who reported concerns were invited to describe them in free-text comments. On zoning, roughly half of respondents (combined "extremely" and "moderately" concerned) signaled worry about potential zoning changes. Cooper emphasized that some survey items had low subgroup response counts (for example, the Arbor Walk event question had only nine responses) and warned those small samples can produce extreme results that might not represent the whole village.

Council members and residents asked follow-up questions about the report and the underlying data. Flower said the full report and a spreadsheet of results had been provided to the village manager and would be posted for public consumption; he said comment coding and deeper qualitative content analysis were not completed within the project’s budget. Several council members suggested future refinements, such as asking whether respondents actually received specific services before rating them, or presenting some items categorically rather than as means to avoid misinterpreting neutral responses.

The presenters recommended the council review the full dataset and comments to guide priorities such as meeting efficiency, public-safety concerns, and zoning communication; they left the council with a public-facing report and the raw data for further analysis. The council thanked the team and invited staff to post the full report and spreadsheet for residents to review.