Every two years Erie residents are able to answer questions about various topics in town. Recently, the Erie Board of Trustees received the responses and presented them.
The town conducts the survey every two years, and National Research Center has been conducting them for the town since 2011.
In March, the National Research Center presented the draft survey to the Board.
During the Aug. 20 meeting, Mayor Jennifer Carroll said they use the results during the budget discussion.
The survey cost $28,535, including the basic service, expanded sample size to 3,000 households, demographic and geographic subgroup comparisons, custom benchmark comparisons and the presentation.
Of the 3,000 surveys mailed, 896 were completed.
Half of the respondents said the small town feel, sense of community, safety, open space, views, neighborhood style and quality of home were why they chose to live in Erie, according to the survey results.
This year, 62% of those surveyed gave an excellent, good, or somewhat good score regarding the town’s overall economic health. This is an increase from 2017, which was 59%. Part of the survey asked if the economy will have a positive impact on income, and only 43% responded positively.
“We have economic health as a focus. We know it’s not great, there’s room for improvement,” Carroll said.
Regarding what priorities residents felt the town should spend money on, 33% of those who took the survey said maintaining, repairing and paving streets was essential, and 51% said it was very important. On the other end of the spectrum, 3% said creating an Erie Historical museum was essential and 7% said it was very important.
The top three funding priorities included maintaining roads, using incentives to create business and employment opportunities and maintaining the town’s appearance/attractiveness.
When it came to sustainability, improving the recycling program strong support was supported by 53% of the respondents, and improving the composting program had 52% strong support.
“I’m happy to see residents support sustainability initiatives,” said mayor pro-tem Geoff Deakin.
Trustee Bill Gippe said he hopes the town keeps those programs on the radar and possibly investigate other options.
When it comes to frequency of using sources of information, only 1% said they always attend, watch or stream board of trustees meetings. The source with the highest percentage was utility bill inserts, with 18% always reading that form of communication.
This year there were seven additional special interest questions which covered topics including town priorities, changes to downtown, sustainability initiatives, civic engagement and reasons for choosing to live in Erie.
To read the survey results, visit erieco.gov.
