Local First Arizona has partnered with the Town of Camp Verde to run a pilot program surveying residents about what they like, and don’t like, about their community.
The study hopes to glean public input on a variety of issues to determine how the local government can better serve and improve the town. The questions are structured to determine what the town is currently doing well and what needs improvement.
Residents of the town are invited to take the confidential 55-question survey, which aims to find out specifically how locals feel about business strength and entrepreneurship, community connection and engagement, talent development and retention, resource stewardship and sustainability, and health and wellbeing in Camp Verde.
Questions range from “How confident do you feel that if a disaster were to strike your city that your community would pull together to help make sure everyone was OK” to “On a scale of 1 to 5, how comfortable are you in going to your nearest primary care physician for medical work?”
Liza Noland, director of rural programs for Local First Arizona, said it’s successfully partnered with the Town of Camp Verde on prior projects, including the recent Verde Grown Agritourism campaign. They are also currently working with the town government to create a five-year strategic plan, so choosing Camp Verde as the first municipality to test the survey on was an obvious choice.
Through the nearly 10 years the organization has spent working with rural communities in the state, it found that since there are only 15 counties in Arizona, the majority of available data on things like job creation, economic growth, housing and quality of life are more focused on larger cities and are not representative of smaller towns and regions.
“Being on the ground with a survey like this, and capturing the input from actual rural residents, helps to paint a more accurate picture of strengths, opportunities and challenges at a local level,” Noland said.
The program is part of the organization’s Rural Community Strength Index [CSI], which is a new tool Local First Arizona is using to evaluate the current strengths and weaknesses in rural communities and help create a plan to build up the economy.
This survey will signify the launch of the program and, if all goes well, the organization will use the data to create a “roadmap” to improve the local economy.
“We felt that through that process, we could deploy the CSI pilot to compare its outcomes to the data we’re collecting from digital resources and community focus groups,” Noland said.
Even if the metrics from the survey don’t end up working for the organization’s CSI program, the answers will still be considered in the creation of the town’s five-year strategic plan.
Those running the project are hopeful that a large portion of the community will respond so they can get the most diverse results possible.
“The beauty of living in rural Arizona is that your voice can truly make a difference. If community leaders and stakeholders don’t have an accurate picture of your priorities, needs and opinions, we are not able to prioritize efforts and funding effectively,” Noland said.
Residents of Camp Verde can take the survey by visiting the Visit Camp Verde Facebook page or website.
