Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Community Survey topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Monett council pauses release of community survey after concerns about respondents and methodology
Summary
Councilors agreed to hold public release of community-survey snapshots after a member flagged many respondents as living outside Monett and raised design concerns; staff will ask the survey author for a detailed breakdown and return with cleaned data before publishing.
Monett — The City Council on Tuesday agreed to delay broadly releasing selected "snippets" from a community survey conducted last fall after councilors raised questions about the survey's design and the geographic validity of responses.
A council member told colleagues a preliminary look showed many respondents listed ZIP codes outside Monett, and said that raised doubts about whether the results reflected city residents' views. Council members and staff discussed how long the survey was, whether it solicited demographic information beyond what the Census provides, and whether some items were extraneous to city policymaking.
Staff said the snapshot slides were intended to be short summaries for social media but acknowledged council concerns about accuracy. A council speaker asked staff to obtain the original survey author’s breakdown and to translate the raw Excel export into a clearer format for review. Staff committed to returning to the council with a more detailed, analyzable dataset and an explanatory presentation before making the excerpts public.
No formal vote was taken; councilors framed the session as a work discussion rather than final action. The council emphasized it wanted to make sure the city is transparent about who completed the survey and how summary percentages were calculated before sharing results with residents.
