THUNDER BAY — Over a period of about three weeks, fewer than 80 people took advantage of an opportunity to comment on the City of Thunder Bay's proposed 2025 operating budget.
It's an outcome that's disappointed City Treasurer Keri Grieves, who feels the city may need to reconsider its approach to citizen engagement.
A report prepared for city council's meeting Monday evening reveals 75 individuals completed the survey on the Get Involved online platform, while another four submitted their responses on paper.
"The survey was not a random sample, and the response was not large enough to be representative of the entire population of the City of Thunder Bay, therefore it is not considered statistically significant," a summary of the report states.
The survey was published on Jan. 17, the same day the budget was made public, and was closed on Feb. 4, the day after council approved it but well ahead of the Feb. 10 ratification date.
It was promoted at a media event, on screens at City Hall, on the online platform, and extensively on social media.
Besides providing access to the survey online, the city made paper copies available at a public question and answer event, as well as at all Thunder Bay Public Library branches and at City Hall.
Despite the city's efforts to encourage participation, a report on the initiative from the corporate services department noted the project should only be considered as a "feedback mechanism" rather than a representation of the greater population.
"As the sample is quite small, the results cannot be extrapolated to the entire population without a large margin of error and must be referred as the opinions of the respondents of this survey," it said.
While adding that the results should be interpreted with caution, it said "the feedback is still important to a transparent and thorough public budget process."
About 57 per cent of the respondents to the survey indicated they were either unhappy or very unhappy with the proposed operating budget.
Around 55 per cent indicated they would like to see a significant decrease in funding in specific sections of the budget, while 38 per cent expressed support for significant increases in various areas.
In an interview Monday, Greaves said he sees public engagement as a key performance indicator for the city.
"They could be good responses, they could be bad responses. We want to hear back from the public. So if we're not even getting people to turnout, then we need to do something different."
Greaves said he's not sure yet how the city might tweak its outreach initiatives related to the budget.
"The thing I've said several times now is that it's an art, not a science. We put it out there, like this survey for instance, and hope that people are interested in where the tax dollars are going. But we're not getting enough people to the site, and filling out the surveys."
He added he's aware other Ontario municipalities are seeing low response rates as well.
"I think for next year, and going forward, we need to look at what we're doing."
