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Roeland Park City committee reviews resident survey draft, debates wording on diversity and parks
Summary
City committee members reviewed a draft resident survey with contractor input, discussed a 100% mailed sample and a 400-response benchmark, and debated precise wording for questions on diversity, sense of belonging and tree canopy ahead of late-summer distribution.
Kate Bender, a meeting facilitator, presented a draft resident survey intended to inform Roeland Park City’s strategic plan and parks master plan and said the questionnaire will be administered by ETC Institute. "For a city the size of Roland Park, it's done it's a 100% sample, so sent to every household via mail," Bender said, describing a mailed census with an online option and follow-up outreach.
City Administrator Keith Modi emphasized how the survey is structured and why benchmarking matters, telling the group "400. 400." when staff described the target number of completed responses ETC typically needs for useful precision. He said the questionnaire follows a general-to-specific design and that comparing Roeland Park’s results with regional and national benchmarks helps officials interpret scores and set priorities.
The committee spent much of the meeting debating question wording. Members raised concerns that a broadly worded item on "support for diverse populations" could be interpreted in multiple ways — racial diversity, economic diversity or other forms of vulnerability — and might be primed by nearby tax-and-fees questions. Ward 3 Council Member Kate Grama suggested specifying the type of diversity if the committee wants clear signal, while others recommended pairing closed questions with follow-up in-person engagement to capture nuance.
Participants also discussed a "sense of belonging" item as an alternative or complement to a support question. Bender and committee members said the sense-of-belonging measure can be disaggregated by race, income and gender identity to reveal differences in how welcome different groups feel in the city.
Parks-related language was another focus. Several members argued that tree canopy and natural habitats are central to Roeland Park City’s identity and suggested replacing or expanding a single "tree canopy" line with wording about "natural places" or habitat to better reflect residents’ attachment to trees and green spaces.
Staff outlined the proposed timeline: finalize question wording, send the mailed survey in late summer and run the data collection through the fall, with community engagement events (roundtables, open houses and short in-person activities) to run in parallel and to dig deeper into priorities the closed questions reveal.
The committee agreed to follow up on a handful of technical edits — refining demographic categories to align with census labels, adding a "prefer not to say" option where appropriate, reviewing translations for languages such as Punjabi, and clarifying whether some items should be moved between sections to reduce priming effects. The meeting closed with staff tasked to revise the draft based on today’s comments and return with an updated version for final review.
