If Dothan residents have ever wanted to throw in their two cents about how the city is being run, they’ll get their chance in just a few weeks.
The Dothan City Commission approved an agreement Tuesday with Kansas-based ETC Institute to design and administer a survey of city residents that will gauge public opinion on the job being done by the commission and what they’d like to see changed.
“Last year during our planning session with all the commissioners, we thought we’d get an independent survey about what all our citizens thought they liked about our city, what they didn’t like, things they want and things they don’t want,” Mayor Mike Schmitz said. “We think we know, but let’s ask our citizens what they think.”
The city will pay $14,650 to ETC Institute to handle the survey, a decision that led to commissioners James Reading and Taylor Barbaree voting against the measure.
Barbaree insisted he isn’t opposed to a survey, but it should be handled internally.
“I agree with the concept of the survey, the idea of it, but I feel we’re going to get less than 5 percent participation from residents, therefore I did not see need to spend $15,000 on a survey conducted by an outside firm,” he said. “The bottom line is I’m all for surveying citizen input, but I felt we could better do it internally through a utility bill. That’s something we could come up with and do through water and electric bills.”
Schmitz said he expects better response to this survey than the city received to a similar survey about its bike plan earlier this year.
“This will be a little bit different, because that was a consumer-driven one where they contacted us, and we’re gonna contact our citizens with this,” he said. “Specifically, we want to get over 500 surveys done. It’s gonna be about seven pages of simple questions. ‘What do you like?’ or ‘What don’t you like?’ or questions like, ‘If you were mayor, what would you do?’”
Barbaree questioned the ultimate effect of the survey.
“Realistically, we don’t have the money as a city right now to move ahead on a wish list,” Barbaree said. “Infrastructure and capital investments have to be our focus. It comes down to money, and I didn’t feel like spending $15,000 on a survey that we’re not going to get a good return on is money well spent. It’s my hope that, since it passed, something good will come of it.”
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