The Town of Morris conducted a community survey before the end of 2016 as part of this year's budget planning and process.

"We made the survey available online and provided paper copies at the office," said Mayor of Morris Gavin van der Linde.  "From this we received some terrific responses that really helped guide our planning for the coming year."

Van der Linde went on to say that the survey was designated to identify priorities of the ratepayers.

The survey received over eighty responses, which Mayor van der Linde was pleased with, noting he felt that it was a better response than they might have receive from an open house.

"Our fire and rescue services, hard infrastructure like street maintenance, storm water drainage, and sidewalks came out as really high priorities for people. The Survey provided varying levels of satisfaction, which made us feel we could work on that more," explained van der Linde.

Van der Linde continued by saying that the town will be doing more comprehensive work with some of the basic hard infrastructure as well as more longer term planning for street maintenance, kicking more of the budget into that area. He noted that the survey was a big help in this year's planning and that they plan to use a similar tool in the future.

"Maybe we could increase our use in it by sending paper copies out to every home included in water bills or put in the mail, we could really see what people's priorities were and it really helped us," said van der Linde.

In addition other priorities that came up with the survey were seniors housing, and upgrades to the communities hospital. Van der Linde said that these are things they are actively working on.