At this special meeting, the Eagan City Council reviewed the 2024 community survey results and the proposed 2026–2027 general fund budget and tax levies. The meeting opened with roll call and adoption of the agenda. No visitors spoke. Key presentations were given by Communications Director Sarah Howard on the community survey and by Finance Director Josh Feldman on the budget. The council expressed general support for both the survey findings and the proposed budget, while noting concerns about rising costs and unmet staffing needs.
Kuinkuilet, että noin, että nuori. Kuisin, että kui kui, mini, tutaj. Kuitella, tuin, tuilekin, noilerin. Kui noin, no matin, no pues, noilteen, noilteen. I understand he mostly trusts us, so that's good. Um, but uh he will uh fortunately I think be back next week uh for our regular scheduled meeting, which will be on a Tuesday, finally, because um, as everybody knows, Monday council meetings are for the birds. Um with that, um uh Ms. Miller, any changes to the agenda tonight? No, Mr. Mayor. Council any changes the agenda. No, sir. Motion to drop the agenda is presented. That's moved and second any further discussion of the agenda. Seeing that all there is no saying I and opposed nay, that motion carries. Uh and we will move right to visitors to be heard. Are there any visitors to be heard on the topics not on tonight's agenda? Seeing none, then we'll move right into uh our first item tonight. Uh it is a review of the twenty twenty-four community survey results. Uh and I understand that uh Sarah Howard is gonna be joining us, so I'll let you leave the Senator Diane or get it started. Thank you, Mayor Council. As you know, every two years the city does partner with an independent research firm of the National Research Center uh to conduct a statistically valid survey of residents. So our community communications and engagements director, Sarah Horwath is here tonight to present an overview of those survey results. Uh it is not May of twenty twenty-five. This presentation to leadership, but it is indeed August of twenty twenty-five. Um tonight here to present the results for the community survey taken by residents at the end of last year. So they they took this uh survey between November and December of twenty twenty-four. Uh there's really gonna be very little new information in this presentation, but instead much of this will build on what we have shared in past years. And it gathers feedback on uh key aspects of life in our community. Uh the survey captures residents' opinions on how we're doing in these ten key facets. The survey captures residents' opinions on how we're doing in these 10 key facets economy, mobility, or really getting around city design, utilities, safety, environment, parks and recreation, health and wellness, and education, arts and culture, and then inclusivity and community involvement. This year's survey included feedback from 423 residents who responded between November 20th and January 10th of 2025. About 15% of those invited chose to participate. So we send a mailer out to 3,000 residents. 15% of those participated. That math doesn't quite math because then we also open it up on our social media channel channels for other additional residents to take that. So the results have a margin of error of plus or minus 5%. And responses were weighted to reflect Egan's demographics. Looking ahead, I plan to work with POCO in the future to better time future surveys. This survey launched during a holiday season. I'm hoping that in coming years we can move that a little bit so that we can ensure that more residents have the opportunity to take our community survey. So this last year we used our social media channels, newsletters, and created posters to hang around the city to encourage participation in the survey. And the National Research Center compares Egan survey results to data from over 500 other communities. This comparison helps show how Egan is doing on these key topics using relevant data from a wide range of places. In each section, Egan's results are marked as higher, much higher, lower, much lower, or similar to national benchmark. Higher or lower means that Egan's average score was more than 10 points different from the national average, and then the much higher or much lower is a 20-point difference. Earlier I mentioned that the survey responses were weighted. That means that Polco compared the demographic information of the survey participants, things like age, gender, race, housing type, and location to official census data. This allowed them to adjust the responses so they better reflect our overall makeup of our community. The goal is to ensure that the voices we hear through the survey are really representative of our community.