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Consultant pitches paid resident panel to give statistically valid community input; council asks about cost and cadence
Summary
Kevin Lyons of FlashHub demonstrated a paid resident-panel service that aims to produce statistically valid, district-level survey results quickly; council members asked about costs (approx. $9,900/year was cited for a typical small-city plan), sample sizes, response rates and the number of surveys allowed under typical contracts.
Kevin Lyons, who identified himself as cofounder of FlashHub, presented a tool the company sells to create scientific panels of local residents for rapid, statistically valid public input.
Lyons described the problem the product is designed to solve: traditional meeting attendance and online comments are self-selected and often unrepresentative. He said FlashHub recruits a local panel and can, in short time, provide results that better reflect the broader community than the small, motivated groups that typically attend meetings.
Lyons gave figures from case studies and typical deployments: he said scientific-panel surveys often aim for a sample in the range of 200–600 for tight margins of error and that the company typically achieves response rates in the 50% range among invited panelists. He cited an example of a customer plan price "about $9,900 for a year" for a city-sized panel that would permit multiple quick surveys and said most clients run two to five surveys per year (contracts sometimes permit up to six surveys annually).
Council members asked practical questions about cost, the number of surveys allowed under a contract, question formats (multiple choice and short answers), representativeness of age groups compared with meeting attendees or social‑media respondents, and whether the platform would supplement or replace the city's existing EngageRexburg tools. Lyons said the panel is intended to complement existing engagement options: "Engagement tools are good for getting input from people interested in the topic... when you want to measure percentages in the community, that's where you do a scientific... panel," Lyons said.
No procurement action was taken during the meeting; staff said they would discuss the presentation further and could return with more information if the council directed them to pursue a contract.
Lyons welcomed follow-up questions and offered to provide a sample survey for the council to review.
