The duty of a Town Council member is to make informed, responsible decisions in the best interests of the community as a whole. The informed part of that duty is to gather and understand the facts of the issue, including Scarborough resident input. We rely on hearing the opinions of our Scarborough community and it is a priority for us to give residents a voice through multiple avenues.
The two primary ways of communication with the Town Council are through public meetings — during the public comment period — and through emails we receive to our towncouncil@scarboroughmaine.org email address. Every week, we receive a number of emails regarding matters affecting our community.
COVID-19 has had numerous effects across all of our lives, but a prominent impact it has had on us as the Town Council is our ability to connect with residents. There is limited resident input during our Zoom meeting public comment period, and not as many emails to the council as we have had in the past. We need additional ways for those living in Scarborough to participate in policy decisions and contribute to strategic planning for the community’s future.
Later this fall season, you will be asked to be involved in a community-wide survey gathering opinions on a variety of topics from growth and land use, to school and municipal service satisfaction, and more. This type of survey helps form policy with short and long term goals. It will be a way for us to garner meaningful data on a population that has grown considerably since a community survey was last administered in 2010.
In the meantime, we want to be proactive with creating opportunities for us to engage with our community as a way to better navigate our decision making process. Next month we will be offering a PULSE style survey within the Town E-Newsletter, sent to subscribers’ email addresses twice monthly.
The PULSE survey style is a frequent, fast and efficient way to collect real time actionable feedback from the residents. It is a single question style survey on a current or upcoming topic of interest, and we will rotate it out as applicable to see how the community responds. The topic will be anything from a current item before the council to opinions on the Goldie Locks vote method for the Budget Referendum.
If you are a current subscriber to the Town E-Newsletter, then you are all set to have your voice heard with the new PULSE survey. If you have not subscribed to the newsletter please do by going to the Scarborough Website>Stay Connected>Town E-Newsletter and sign up. The ENewsletter is delivered straight to your email inbox on the first and 15th of each month and contains news you can use and the new Pulse survey link to voice your opinion. Your opinion will be heard, your opinion matters.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Scarborough Town Council.
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