Town’s Resident Satisfaction survey extended into the New Year

December 15, 2022 · 0 Comments

Aurora residents will have further opportunities to identify the municipal issues that matter most to them.

The Town has extended the amount of time community members can register their feedback with its new Resident Satisfaction Survey to January 6 after concerns were raised at the Council table that the original deadline of December 23 created too narrow a window for people to speak their minds.

“I think we have all been waiting for this to occur,” said Ward 2 Councillor Rachel Gilliland at last week’s General Committee meeting. “I would like to see an extension on that because it runs from (December 6) through December 23. This is a busy time of year and this is a very important engagement piece. People are getting ready for the holidays, so I would like to see an extension of that for at least two weeks.”

Aurorans will now have more time to tell lawmakers and staff whether they feel the community is on the right track, where there are areas of improvement, and much more.

The survey, as The Auroran reported last week, is available through the Town’s Engage Aurora website. It’s an opportunity for Aurorans to identify issues that are most important for them as well as their levels of satisfaction with municipal services and programs.

“It’s best practice for municipalities to run these kinds of surveys and to give residents the opportunity to provide feedback on everything from impression of the Town’s use of tax dollars, to quality of life, top of mind issues, and importantly for us, satisfaction with programs and services,” says Daniel Bitonti, Communications Manager for the Town of Aurora. “Some of the other questions also touch upon municipal planning priorities as well as preferred methods of communication with the Town.

“What’s exciting about this is we haven’t done one in several years and this is intended to provide a baseline to track progress against future surveys and the hope is we will be conducting these on a biennial basis going forward so we can actually see how we are incorporating the feedback from community members in making necessary changes.”

Housing and planning, he says, are current hot-button issues and are reflected in the survey and the Town is particularly interested in hearing residents’ opinions on how Aurora can manage growth and provide different types of housing for different income levels in a diverse population.

How often residents use municipal programs and services is another area where feedback will provide a good foundation for the future.

In addition to the online survey, municipal staff will continue to engage with residents face-to-face on many of these issues, as well as continue outreach through random telephone interviews.

“The reason why we do that is randomized telephone interviews, which is the same content on the survey, is statistically more reliable,” says Bitonti. “These two data sets will actually be broken out from the online to the telephone interview. The online version is actually important to us because we know we can only get a certain number of phone interviews, and our goal is to get 800 completions. We know that there are a lot of people in the community who won’t be called for those interviews who still want to provide feedback. It’s the same survey but two different methods going on at the same time.

“While we have different avenues to provide feedback on the Official Plan or Active Transportation Master Plan, we haven’t had a chance in a long time to really engage overall quality of life in Aurora. I highly encourage people to take the time [to complete the survey]. It should only take about 10 minutes to do and I know it is obviously the holiday season and people are busy but this is super-important to kind of give feedback to Council and staff on the priorities that matter to residents. This is an important tool that can really shape and improve programs and services at the Town.”

To take the survey, visit engageaurora.ca/residentsurvey.

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter