02-09-2026 - Agenda Packet City Council - Regular Meeting

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: Polco Task 3.2: Outreach and Administration Polco will administer the survey, including confirming the sampling methodology, selecting and stratifying a random address -based sample, printing and mailing survey materials, and hosting the survey on Polco's platform. Polco will support City-wide promotion through an open participation survey and the setup of a Polco Profile to support ongoing engagement beyond the initial survey. Statistically Sampled Distribution: A representative sample of residents will be invited to complete the survey to ensure statistically valid results. We will use statistically appropriate methodologies to garner community -wide representativeness, targeting a 5% margin of error. The invitations will contain an introduction outlining the importance of the survey, a URL and QR code, and instructions for completing it. The mailed invitations also include a phone number and email address for residents who have questions about the survey. We sample from a complete list of all residential households in your community. The addresses are geocoded and compared to GIS boundary maps (provided by the City) to ensure only residents are selected. We oversample multi -family housing units as they tend to respond at lower rates than those in single-family homes. Those in multifamily housing also tend to have higher representation of socio-economic groups that have lower responses (such as renters, lower -income and younger residents). Print and Mail Invitations and Surveys: We will mail a round of postcards and a round of survey packets (including the printed questionnaire, a cover letter and a postage -paid return envelope) one week apart, to 3,000 randomly selected Orono households. Mailers will contain instructions and carry both a QR code and URL that direct residents to take the survey online, or return the paper survey. Our rigorous statistical methodology is designed for community -wide representativeness targeting a 4%-6% margin of error. We have recently also tested a text invitation to the outreach and have had responses increase 20% or more. We can provide that as an add -on option. Hosted on Polco, the online survey will be programmed on your branded profile (using your logo) where you will be able to build a panel of respondent subscribers for continued engagement. City -Wide Promotion: To reach as many residents as possible, in addition to the scientific, random sample methodology described above, Polco additionally proposes that the City conduct a community -wide open participation survey. This online -only survey is identical to the random sample questionnaire, but with a different URL so that results are kept separate. Orono staff promote the survey over several weeks through all of the City's trusted communications channels, to maximize the number of residents that see and have an opportunity to complete the survey. To support this effort, Polco will provide you with an outreach kit of templated messaging and images. The results of the open participation survey can be blended with the responses to the random sample - if when they are statistically vetted they are found to be representative (not skewed to one community group). Otherwise they will be shown in an appendix to the main report of results, representing those in your community who are more engaged. Continued Engagement: A strength of Polco is the ability to turn what could be one-off respondents into a panel of residents for continued engagement. To take advantage of this polco.us 19 80