Community survey results presented to New Braunfels City Council

The results of the New Braunfels Community Survey were presented by Polco, a civic analytics firm, at New Braunfels City Council on July 11.

Of the 6,000 surveys mailed to households across the city, 827 responses were received. Of those who chose to participate in the open-participation sample by filling out the survey online, 714 responses were received. The survey was conducted between March and the end of April.

The survey is part of the National Community Survey, which is developed by the National Research Center at Polco and the International City/County Management Association. New Braunfels previously completed the survey in 2012, 2014, 2017 and 2019.

“We saw a robust response to this hybrid approach with 827 total responses received and an overall response rate of 14%,” said Jade Arocha, director of survey research with the National Research Center. “All of those materials were also available in both English and Spanish. Any Spanish version of the survey was available online also."

Among the findings were that 9 out of 10 residents gave New Braunfels the designation of an excellent or good place to live, and 8 in 10 would also recommend New Braunfels as a place to live and also plan on remaining in town for the next five years.

Survey participants also ranked utility infrastructure as an overall essential and very important priority to maintain.

Mobility, however, is an increasingly concerning issue, and all indicators asked in the survey—including traffic flow on major streets, ease of public parking, ease of travel by car, ease of travel by bicycle, ease of travel by public transportation and ease of walking—have all trended down since the last few surveys.

“Within this facet, mobility, transportation, etc. tended to be lower than the national benchmark comparisons,” Arocha said.

More information on the survey results can be found here.