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Consultant: Oswego residents give high marks to village services in 2025 survey
Summary
A statistically valid survey of 606 Oswego households found broad satisfaction with village services, with 88% calling Oswego an excellent or good place to raise children; traffic and management of village finances emerged as top priorities. The board asked staff for follow-up cross-tabs and mode breakdowns.
Jason Murado, director of community research at ETC Institute, told the Village of Oswego's Committee of the Whole that a 2025 community survey shows residents rate the village highly for overall quality of services and for being a place to raise children.
Murado said ETC received 606 completed surveys — more than the 500-response target — producing a margin of error of ±3.9 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. "This is a statistically valid random sample," he said, noting the team monitored respondent demographics during collection and used follow-ups where needed to ensure age, gender and race/ethnicity distributions were representative.
The survey found 88% of respondents rated Oswego an excellent or good place to raise children and 87% rated it an excellent or good place to live. Murado said Oswego scored above the U.S. average in 55 of 60 measured service areas and significantly above the national average in 53 areas. "Customer service provided by village employees" and "overall quality of village services" were among the highest-rated categories.
Traffic flow and congestion, affordable housing and some cultural and job-availability measures were the survey's lowest-rated areas. Murado said the top priorities residents identified for the next several years were value received for tax dollars and fees, traffic flow and congestion, and management of village finances.
Village President (chair) thanked the consultant: "That was a great presentation," the president said, and praised the high ratings for police and public works staff. Trustees pressed for additional analysis. One trustee asked how the survey balanced demographics; Murado said the survey included demographic questions and the response set matched village demographics closely (about 49% male, 51% female in ETC's early checks).
Trustees asked several detailed follow-ups: breakdowns of response mode (mail, QR code, online), cross-tabs by age and how long respondents had lived in Oswego, and analysis of open-ended comments. Murado said the firm can provide precise mode counts (historically ETC sees about 60–70% online vs. 30–40% mail) and agreed to run cross-tabulations by generation and tenure. On open-ended responses, Murado said verbatim comments are included in the report and that ETC has experimented with AI tools to summarize themes; he offered to run that analysis for the board.
Murado and staff also explained how the survey fits the village's planning timeline: the results are intended to feed the board's strategic planning this summer and then the budget workshop cycle. The board recorded several follow-up requests to be delivered with the full report.
The report and the requested follow-ups were accepted for information; the board thanked Murado and moved on to the next agenda item.
