City considering poll on public safety needs, levy

Posted on March 6, 2024 by Jenn Rowell

Commissioner Susan Wolff proposed polling residents to get a better idea of what they’re willing to support for public safety.

At the end of the March 5 meeting, Wolff said during commissioner initiatives that she thought the city should spend the money to gather that public input.

She said she didn’t want to ask public safety department heads to come back again and explain their needs as they’ve done that enough over the last two years.

Commissioner Rick Tryon said he’d support it, but wanted to know what they were asking.

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Wolff said that to save money they could use a free tool like Survey Monkey but there’s no validity to that type of polling.

During a special Feb. 12 commission meeting on public safety, City Manager Greg Doyon reminded commissioners that they had discussed hiring a third party consultant to study the city’s public safety posture, but decided against spending that money.

Wolff said during the Feb. 12 meeting, that if they are going to approach voters again for a levy, they need to involved the community more. She said she didn’t think they could conduct a poll since that would cost $28,000 or more.

She suggested using free tools like Survey Monkey or Google to poll the community on public safety.

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Wolff said in February that the community didn’t understand the public safety needs and hadn’t heard the information shared during their work session. She said the city needed to find ways to communicate with the public.

The city employs several people with public communication as part of their job duties and paid Wendt Agency $150,000 to help with the public safety levy campaign in 2023.

Doyon told commissioners during the March 5 meeting that professional polling would cost an estimated $35,000 to $40,000.

Tryon said he wasn’t in favor of spending general fund money to do a poll but would be fine if the money was privately raised.

He said that if they were going to raise money to do a poll, he’d prefer the questions weren’t framed around how much taxpayers will willing to pay for public safety.

Tryon said the questions should be what they’d cut in city services or tax to fund public safety.

Doyon said that professional polling would come from the general fund unless there was a private source willing to fund it.

He said he could start by getting the polling questions from other communities who did similar polls, who had said in a meeting of municipal executives that the information was useful to them in their own public safety asks.

Missoula, Helena and Kalispell have public safety asks on their ballots this year and Bozeman still deciding on when they’ll make their ask.

Doyon said he disagreed with Tryon in that the specific question they’re asking is what investment in public safety taxpayers are willing to make.

Wolff said she doesn’t want to wait weeks and months to make decisions since she’s looked at the city’s public safety personnel and “we’re not helping them.”

Commissioner Joe McKenney said if they were going to do another levy, they need to do something different.

He suggested waiting on a poll to first have a public safety panel to advise them.

Commissioner Shannon Wilson said that they shouldn’t count on a poll as the “be all end all” since public participation is often low.

Wolff said constituents contact her about supporting public safety and their needs.

“We’re in trouble,” she said.

Commissioners made no decisions but asked Doyon to gather more information.

To prepare for their levy ask, the Great Falls Public Library Foundation funded polling that was used to develop their proposal, which voters approved in June.

Commissioners had approved putting the library levy on the June ballot saying they didn’t want it on the November ballot to compete with the public safety levy and bond.

City officials had spent most of last year attempting to educate the public about those public safety needs and challenges ahead of the Nov. 7 vote on the levy and bond, both of which failed.

The vote on the levy was 5,620 in favor and 9,095 opposed.

The vote on the bond was 6,726 in favor and 7,925 opposed.

For more background on what public safety officials said about their public safety needs and proposed changes due to the levy failure, read this story from February.

City reviewing public safety needs, resources after levy failure

For further background:

Great Falls Public Library expands hours with levy funds; discusses management agreement

Tryon asks to review library management; library board to discuss at Feb. 27 meeting

City to review budget; Tryon drops push to move library funds to public safety

Library continuing levy implementation; Tryon asks to consider pulling some funding for public safety

City officials discuss public safety after levy, bond failure

Municipal elections results: Reeves, Tryon, Wilson win commission seats; public safety levy and bond fail

Ballots due Nov. 7 for city races, public safety levy and bond

City adjusts public safety ballot language to reflect updated tax impact estimates

City officials discuss public safety levy, bond for Nov. 7 ballot

City Commissioners vote to send public safety infrastructure bond to the November ballot