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Council reviews 2025 community survey plan; consultants say $25,000 contract and 15-minute average completion
Summary
City staff and Magellan Strategies presented the 2025 community survey plan, sampling methodology and schedule. Magellan said the contract is $25,000 and that the survey will use a registered-voter sampling frame with online links by text; council debated length and whether to add an east-west highway crossing question.
Community Communications Director Camden and Magellan Strategies consultant Ryan Wenger reviewed the draft 2025 community survey, explaining why the city repeats many questions from 2022 for longitudinal comparison and how the survey will be administered.
Wenger described the methodology: the firm will sample registered voters within the city to ensure coverage (including stratification by side of the interstate for certain district questions), send a text message with a link to an online survey, and issue reminders. He estimated an average respondent time of about 15 minutes and said the approach usually yields a strong response rate. "We take that list of registered voters," Wenger said, and "we're able also to kind of segment them in terms of which side of the interstate they're on so that they can self-identify." The council discussed survey length and scope; several members said 15 minutes might be long for respondents and urged trimming questions or rotating some sections between survey cycles to preserve comparability while reducing length.
The council also discussed content specifics — for example, whether to add a simple question about residents' propensity or need to cross the interstate (to inform future planning around a potential park/commercial area). Some council members said now is too conceptual to ask about crossing the highway; others said a single baseline question could be useful. Staff confirmed the contract price: "The contract is 25,000," Camden said. The council directed staff to finalize question wording and launch mid-to-late September, with a presentation of results scheduled for Oct. 21.
Why it matters: the survey informs city priorities on service delivery, parks and recreation, public safety trust and infrastructure; the council's decision to keep questions comparable to previous cycles preserves trend analysis but leaves room to add targeted questions where useful.
