What should Darien’s parks and recreation services look like in the future, and how should they change to better serve the town’s residents? Town officials want to know and have set up this online survey open to all residents to benefit from your ideas and judgment.
The survey is part of a town-government commissioned “Parks and Recreation Needs Assessment” as part of an effort to update the existing parks and recreation master plan.
This image is from the first page of the online survey. You can go from page to page online to see the questions without filling in any of the answers.
The online survey for town residents was live online as of Friday, May 5, 2017. A survey is also being mailed to all 3,500 Darien households, so responses don’t have to be online.
“Community input is an important part of this process and helps the town to best tailor the plan to reflect the community’s desires and needs,” the Parks & Recreation Department said in an announcement late Friday afternoon.
Many of the initial questions in the survey are about where you live in town and what parks and recreation programs your family uses. Later in the survey, you’re asked specific questions about various ideas for improvements and how you would prioritize them. Still later in the survey, you’re asked open-ended questions about what you’d like to see that may not have been mentioned in the survey.
“A random sampling of residents has been invited to take a survey, and these responses will provide statistically valid results,” according to the announcement. In addition responses from the mailed survey also “will comprise the statistically-valid sample.”
The online survey open to the entire town supplements the random sampling and the mailed survey.
The announcement also said:
“The open-link survey will give all residents an opportunity to provide feedback, and their responses will be included in the final report. While open-link results will be kept separate from the statistically valid responses, these responses will none-the-less provide valuable feedback for the Town of Darien.”
The effort to gather information from and preferences of town residents is meant to provide “critical information in determining community values, satisfaction levels, needs and priorities, and demographics for the town’s long-term planning efforts,” according to the announcement.
The master plan project is led by Weston & Sampson and GreenPlay, LLC, with survey and data work done by RRC Associates.
Part of a question in another part of the online survey