Commission forms ad hoc committee to refine parks survey and resident verification

The Recreation and Parks Commission directed staff to refine the department's community survey and set up community outreach to verify how many users live inside Placerville and to prioritize services.

Director Dennis Nishihara described a 10-question draft survey and said question 10 would collect addresses to verify city residency. Commissioners and the public debated brevity versus detail, with several asking that the survey distinguish which parks and programs respondents mean and that it use interface logic (conditional questions) so follow-ups appear only when relevant.

Vice Mayor Jackie Ngo urged targeted outreach to city residents and suggested mailing or leveraging the water bill to improve resident response rates. "We need to really drill into understanding how many county residents we're serving in all of our programs," she said, arguing that residency data will help the city negotiate funding with the county for widely used services such as the pool.

Commissioners favored both an online and mailed approach, a short questionnaire with a comment box for details, and clearer wording on question 9 (what "I would like to learn more about" covers). The commission agreed staff should revise the draft, and Commissioners Potter and Luhan volunteered to serve on an ad hoc committee to help with outreach and to return a revised draft in August for endorsement.

What happens next: staff will revise the survey based on commissioner feedback, digitize it, and bring a revised version to the August meeting; an ad hoc committee of Commissioners Potter and Luhan will assist with outreach planning.