Mayor Leads Effort to Improve Missoula: Your Feedback Matters!

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - Keep an eye out for a postcard in your mailbox sent out by the City of Missoula and signed by Mayor Andrea Davis that will be used to impact decisions that will affect the community.

I spoke to the city’s Chief Operations Officer Eric Hallstrom about the purpose of the survey.

The National Community Survey is Coming to Missoula

“The National Community Survey is a national survey of communities that gets resident feedback on city services and their feelings about the community in general, and it helps identify community priorities. It provides us with data that we can use to incorporate into decision-making as we try to be smarter about meeting the community needs, and it helps our leaders of all stripes, in being more effective in serving the community that they've been tasked to lead.”

Hallstrom dug deeper into the survey.

You'll Be Asked about Quality of Life and Public Safety Questions

“They're going to ask about the quality of life in Missoula, for your perceptions about different aspects of community life, public safety; they're going to ask about how the city does in providing some of its services,” he said. “They're going to ask you to identify which services you find most important to you and your family, and it will cover everything from evaluating city services to just general feelings about the overall community environment and priorities of individual respondents.”

Hallstrom said the survey will come in two waves.

“The way that it's structured is that first, a subset of the population will receive postcards,” he said. “Those postcards will have instructions on how to access the survey, and that is a managed, statistically valid collection of data that will be evenly distributed across the city in all of our wards, and then starting November 13, all community members will be able to take the survey.”

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Officials Will Use the Survey to Improve Life in Missoula

Hallstrom said city officials will use the results of the survey to improve life in Missoula.

“It will allow our city leaders to make better decisions that are more in line with the community's priorities and perspectives and get some sense about their overall feelings of safety community engagement, and very well could lead to changes both in programs and in how we govern some of our activities.”

The postcard will ask you not to share the link because the community as a whole will have the chance to take the survey.