The city’s public safety advisory committee held it’s fourth meeting on June 19.

For the first hour, the committee didn’t have a quorum and continued their discussion from the last meeting on the mechanics of tax increment finance districts and tax abatements.

A sixth committee member arrived making a quorum and the group moved to their discussion of a public safety poll or community survey.

The city released a request for proposals is May and those proposals were due by June 19.

City Manager Greg Doyon said that the city received four proposals.

City Commissioners will review those proposals at an upcoming meeting and determine whether to move forward.

During the June 19 committee meeting, members discussed the merits of such a poll.

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Sandra Guynn, committee chair, said that she thinks the city has to do something to get a sense of the public’s thinking.

“I’m not sure that residents by and large even think that there is a public safety problem,” Guynn said.

She said that having served on a neighborhood council for many years, a complaint amongst the nine councils, has been that people don’t show up to meetings or engage unless there’s something controversial.

Guynn said it was an oddity in 2023 that the public safety levy was controversial and presented at neighborhood council meetings, town halls and other venues and people didn’t know up.

City staff provided some examples of community surveys from other communities, some in Montana, some nationwide.

Guynn said that a poll in Missoula focused on city services overall and that public safety had dropped off the list as a concern and she wondered if Great Falls was in a similar position.

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“We go about our business not in fear that something horrible is going to happen to us,” she said.

Guynn said that during the levy process of 2023, it was the city telling people what the problem was, but maybe residents didn’t see it that way.

She said that the committee and the city can’t do much if they don’t understand what the residents perceive the problem to be.

Doyon, city manager, said that when the city went to the voters in 1969 to get a bond for four new fire stations, they had to include racquetball courts in each that were available to the public.

Even back then, he said, city leaders knew there had to be some incentive for community support.

Doyon said the purpose of the poll isn’t to have someone tell city officials what they need to do, but to have people who have experience in statistically valid polling to craft questions to get a sense of where the voter is in terms of public safety and whether they feel its adequate or where the concerns are and determine whether to make a second levy ask.

During the last committee meeting, some members suggested using free or cheaper options like a Survey Money online tool.

Doyon said those options wouldn’t be statistically valid of yield useful results.

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He said the “levy was controversial but you wouldn’t have necessarily known that from the attendance,” at public meetings and presentations on the levy ask.

Doyon said the question is how to engage the community effectively in a way that doesn’t waste everyone’s time developing a levy ask that is not on target.

Aaron Weissman, committee member and local business owner, said that he thinks it’s important to get a sense of what the voters think on public safety.

Guynn asked committee members to start jotting down ideas for their public safety related recommendations even though they’d still be meeting through the end of August.

She said the community poll could also get a sense of what people might want to cut for public safety funding or what city services they want.

‘I’m not sure the folks know” what they want, she said.

Wendy McKamey, a state legislator who lives in the county and was appointed to the committee, said that she didn’t attend any of the neighborhood council meetings or public presentations last year and asked what the city presented to the voters about the public safety need and the levy ask.

Doyon gave a brief overview of the information presented during hours of town halls, neighborhood council meetings, and commission work sessions.

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That information is still available on the Safety in the Falls website, as are video recordings of both town halls.

Weissman said he didn’t think attendance at public meetings was a good barometer of public opinion and that they need to speak to the public in ways they will respond.

Guynn said that’s why she thinks a poll is needed since the people didn’t come to the city and they need to find out what the people think.

Weissman said they did tell officials in their vote.

He said he thought many voters were confused why the city was asking for a public safety levy after the county had already had a successful public safety levy and didn’t understand the difference or why the city and county couldn’t work together on timing.

City Commissioner Susan Wolff said during public comment that Missoula recently passed a safety levy and that businesses there had signs of support in their windows.

“We had a hard time getting our business community engaged,” she said.

The safety committee meets again July 3.