NEW ULM — After 11 years, City Council decided to temporarily suspend participation in the Performance Measurement Citizen Survey for 2024.

The survey, which went out to 125 households in each ward for 500 total, gave residents the chance to rate the city and PUC services they receive and provide comments. Using this feedback, City Council could see where residents were satisfied or dissatisfied. They could then focus effort and resources on problem areas.

Two choices were presented to City Council. Either they continue the program for another year or decline participation in the program. City Manager Chris Dalton opened the conversation, suggesting a pause could be good to re-evaluate the survey.

“If we continue with this year, we eventually take at least a year off so we can revamp the survey,” he said. “I think the questions were asking in the survey, while they were good performance measures and you can stack them up year to year, we need to edit those questions.”

Councilman Les Schultz said he likes the survey and the trends they can see from its results. He said there has not been a lot of change in survey results in the last few years, with firemen and snow-plowing often receiving high and low scores respectively.

Councilman Eric Warmka supported the survey’s merits, but thought having two surveys at the same time could be overkill.

“The only reason I would ever think of declining would be the strategic plan is coming up right now,” Warmka said. “Is this going to confuse people if we’re putting out a survey and then putting out another survey? [Would it be] overkill for this year?”

Council President Andrea Boettger, Councilman Dave Christian, and Councilman Larry Mack all agreed with Warmka’s assessment. Boettger and Mack said a year or two off would be a good way to re-evaluate the survey and determine what questions to ask moving forward.

Warmka made the motion to decline participation in the survey measuring satisfaction levels for city and PUC services during the year 2023. Christian seconded the motion.