Above: Let Town officials know how you feel about services and resources, and what you would like to see prioritized. (image cropped from flyer)
Last month, I shared that the Town is asking residents to take the annual “Satisfaction Survey”. Since I posted the news, the Town added two more (optional) topics to the survey — Drone Delivery and Senior Center & Council on Aging. (They’ve also highlighted that a third topic that was initially on the list, Affordable Housing, is “new this year”.)
The annual survey is meant to inform officials on how residents feel about Southborough’s quality of life, departments and resources, and priorities for what they would like to see officials focus on. The survey allows options both for a quicker overview, and for drilling down into more detail on topics you care about.
This fall, the Municipal Technology Committee (MTC) opened the 2026 survey on October 1st with a November 30th deadline to respond.
On October 27th, MTC Chair Matt Probst said that he hadn’t been promoting the survey because he was adding the sections. He said that he would now be making a big push.
I’ve seen a couple of recent promos on a closed Facebook group (including the flyer I included). But the Town still hasn’t posted about it on its website or issued an alert to people who are signed up for Town notices.
Why the new sections were added
Sometime between my October 8th post and the MTC’s October 27th meeting, Probst added new sections to the survey.
He told his committee that the drone delivery section was in response to the Select Board’s desire to learn what the community thought of Amazon’s attempt to launch Prime Air drone deliveries out of their Westborough facility, including to much of Southborough. As I covered earlier this month, Amazon later pulled back its application to the Westborough Planning Board. But the project isn’t necessarily dead.
In an October 23rd meeting, the Select Board signed onto a letter, spearheaded by Westborough, from Towns that would be impacted by the project. The letter told the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Amazon that they support a push for a site-specific Environmental Assessment and a transparent public engagement process before the FAA authorizes proposed flights. (In their meeting, the Southborough Select Board members noted public concerns over the proposed project, but didn’t mention the survey.)
Probst also told his committee that he added the Senior Center section after speaking to those folks about their interest in conducting a survey. The center had wanted a printed survey to be made available to seniors for greater accessibility, and that they could mail. Probst said they would look into that for future years, but couldn’t for this year’s survey.
(Worth noting, the senior center newsletter issued for November and December makes no mention of the survey.)
The 2026 Survey
After confirming they are residents, survey participants will see the following introduction:
This survey has been put together by various town departments to collect your feedback to improve the town. Thank you for your willingness to provide honest and actionable feedback! Your answers will be shared publicly, in anonymous form, and will be provided to the Select Board and other town departments/boards to help guide improvements.
While residents interested in answering all 99 questions are encouraged to, Town officials know that not many will dedicate the time required for that.1
Alternatively, you can eliminate sections of the survey you want to skip over. But, counter-intuitively, to do that, you need to select under Question # 7 which “aspects of town that you WANT to provide feedback on today”.
The survey hasn’t just been added to, the sections have also been re-ordered. It now shows the following list of options:
- Technology & Communication (~5 minute)
- Recreation (~3 minutes)
- Housing, Quality of Life, & Schools (~3 minutes)
- Public Works (~3 minutes)
- Local Businesses (~3 minutes)
- Affordable Housing (~3 minutes)
- Town Process Improvement (~3 to 10 minutes)
- Drone Delivery (~4 minutes)
- Senior Center & Council on Aging (COA)(~8 to 10 minutes)
- Library (~3 minutes)
- Youth, Family, & Social Services (~2 minutes)
- Transportation (~1 minute)
- Emergency Services (~2 minutes)
If you don’t check any of the boxes for the above the topics, all of them will be presented to you by default.
Once you complete the above sections, the final 10 questions of the survey seek demographic information on the respondent.
The survey is conducted each year by the Municipal Technology Committee. (In September, the committee presented the findings from the 2025 survey and their follow up strategy to the Select Board. You can read their presentation here.)
Click here to take the 2026 survey.
