Before we all got distracted by the event we came to know as Snowtober, Southborough officials were busy working on a citizen survey to assess what we all think of the town and the services it provides. You should have received your copy of the survey – one per household – in the mail earlier this week.
I got mine. There are questions about which services you would like to see receive increased or decreased funding, what you think of different options for the Transfer Station, how satisfied you are with various town services, and more.
In a press release, Town Administrator Jean Kitchen said the survey is designed to act “as a roadmap for town officials as they manage and allocate resources” for services like schools, recreation, and trash collection.
You’re asked to complete and return the survey by Friday, November 11. You can pop it in the mail or drop it off at the Town House, Library, Senior Center, or Transfer Station (but not in the hopper). You can also complete the survey online, but you’ll need the access code found on the printed version that was mailed to you. (Kitchen said at the Board of Selectmen meeting last night that a question about whether Town Meeting should be moved to a Saturday was left off the paper version of the survey, but is included in the online version, so if you that’s an issue you want to weigh in on, take the online version.)
Town officials hope to achieve 100% participation on the survey. “I urge every household in town to make their voices heard by completing their resident survey,” Kitchen said.
Results of the survey will be tabulated and presented to the Board of Selectmen at a meeting in December. Results will also be available on the town website, and you can bet we’ll be talking about them here, as well.
I’ll start the comments off….
First question is how did the transfer station options get chosen. My number 1 choice, of normal curbside pickup by one contracted hauler paid for by taxes, WITHOUT special bags, is not an option. I consider this to be the most “normal” option and find it weird that it isn’t included. Given the remaining choices, my real answer would be I need more information. Without knowing the costs of each of these different options, and what would happen to that 250K in current tax money, I don’t think anybody could really choose. But… I will choose since I don’t want my vote to be ignored since ‘I need more information’ is probably a wasted vote, which brings me to…
Man I hate surveys. Lets start with question number 20. The rate matters… how can I answer that without the rate. For question 15, how the internet voting would work is very important to the answer. Many people may interpret this as all the things will be available to vote on at one time, versus getting to vote online over the course of hours as it would be if you were at town meeting. If it means the latter, we could spend a lot of time and money implementing this to get no change in voter participation. For question 17, the real answer is has to do with the ratio of the two options shown. I strongly value both those things.
How do I even start on how absurd the entirety of question 9 is. This question is simply a political tactic on finding out what to “pretend” the override is for. The budget is the budget. Saying the override is “for” something is just ridiculous.
Lastly, does it bother anybody else that there is this north of 9/south of 9 divide. I’m not sure I get it.
Nit: state law requires a purpose and dollar value to be tied with overrides on a ballot question.
The question that I didn’t like was “do you think southboro is affordable?” Well, I’m swimming in dough and I don’t have gold fixtures but I can live here and pay my bills so yes it is affordable. But for someone else maybe it’s not. It’s just too vague. I also agree with the prop 2 1/2 question. I just checked “no” for all of them. The transfer station question was also ridiculous. Like the local general contractor question – I don’t want a general contractor using the dump if he’s abusing it every other day with a huge amount of trash – and if that trash is coming from a job in another town – even more reason – but I don’t want to punish every contractor. Most of them probably aren’t taking advantage of the situation.
These kind of questions can’t be asked in such a generalized way.
Has everyone received their’s already? We haven’t received ours and I’m wondering if we’re the only ones…
I believe they were mailed out last Friday. We got ours on Saturday. You might call up to the Town House and check: (508)-485-0710
Survey questions left out:
If school population continues to decline, are you in favor of closing one school?
If you have kids in the school system now, will you be leaving town once all of your kids have graduated?
I think it’s good they’re asking about the transfer station, but for the question where they list various funding options, I thought it was odd that certain obvious options were left off. For example, one option was to have it funded entirely by sticker fees. But, the opposite option, to have it funded entirely by taxes, wasn’t given. I know they can’t give every possible option, but obvious contrasts like that would have been good, and given a more representative view of people’s thoughts.