Residents of Mexico will soon be asked their opinions and thoughts on the city’s parks and recreation system after the city council unanimously approved a contract for a survey at the regular meeting on Oct. 9.

City Parks and Recreation Director Chad Shoemaker told council members that in 2013 the council approved a master plan for the parks system that includes a survey mechanism to determine the direction of the system and assessment of the job being done.

Shoemaker said the survey’s sophistication will allow the city to find out what people want, where they want it, and where those people live.

“We can, not only tell what people desire to have built or have money spent on, but we can also tell which parts of town desire it,” Shoemaker said to the council.

The survey contains basic questions to determine if patrons are satisfied with the parks and approve of the current direction.

“We’re looking for data on things that we have gathered in the past,” A good example is “How well maintained do you think the parks are? Which park do you use most often? If you had $100 which activities would you spend it on?” Shoemaker said.

Shoemaker said those types of questions could be asked by any of the city’s departments but they’re also some of the most important questions.

“We’ll keep those core pieces because my department needs that to know if we’re doing what we need to be doing or not and so we know if we’re spending money where people want us to,” Shoemaker said.

Some questions will be more pointed like where to locate an entrance to Tyronn Lue Park and where to locate a dog park. Those questions will replace other questions no longer needed like questions about building a pool. 

Shoemaker said the cost of the survey and what’s budgeted may differ because the more pointed questions may require some additional work. Shoemaker said some questions will, “Will require some additional data crunching and put tables or diagrams together to make that data a little bit easier to read.”