Vienna to roll out community survey this October

For Town of Vienna residents who have thoughts about traffic on Maple Avenue or the state of local parks, a chance to share those opinions has arrived.

Starting this month, the town will conduct a National Community Survey to gauge how it’s doing on education, transportation, recreation, public services and other topics that affect the quality of life for its 16,544 denizens.

The survey typically crops up every two years, but this will be its first appearance since 2018 after a 2020 version got scuttled “for pandemic-related reasons,” the town says.

Administered this year by the community engagement contractor Polco, the survey will roll out in two phases, per a press release:

In the first phase, which begins in early October, a randomly selected representative sample of Vienna households will receive a notice in the mail requesting participation in the statistically valid survey. In the second phase, set to begin Oct. 30, community members who did not receive the survey in the mail will be invited to provide their feedback by completing the survey online. The surveys provided during both phases are identical and take approximately 15 minutes to complete.

In the 2018 questionnaire, which was a National Citizen Survey conducted by the National Research Center, residents reported feeling good overall about Vienna, but traffic flow and the availability of quality affordable housing were sore points.

The results of this year’s survey will be shared on the town’s website and at a Vienna Town Council meeting in January 2024.

“Ultimately, the feedback will be used to help inform future Town government decisions that affect the community,” the Town of Vienna said.