The Town Academy Community Center Advisory Committee is seeking resident input to gather ideas on how best to use the former Academy School building. The Committee has announced a new survey designed to gather feedback about what residents would like to see in a community center.

Committee member and survey administrator John Lamirande said the survey is focused on community response and direct feedback from residents and potential users of the facility.

“The intent of the survey is to identify the community’s needs, which are not already being served by other facilities already available,” said Lamirande. “The structure of the survey is that it provides a high-level set of questions to determine where a person’s general interest is. Then as they select in each of the categories, it brings in clarifying questions to really drill down and get the most amount of information from the community."

Lamirande said the survey was designed to take no more than three to five minutes to complete, and it is compatible with both traditional desktop computers and mobile devices including laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

Residents participated in a survey in 2019, but according to Lamirande, it only received a limited number of participants. He’s optimistic the new survey will allow for greater participation.

“The original survey was only open for a limited time, so we only received a limited number of participants,” said Lamirande. “But it provided us with the guidance we needed to know how to structure this one properly. This will be open for more than six weeks, and we are taking every opportunity at public events to make sure the community is aware and participates.”

Committee Co-Chair Bill Stableford said the new survey is easy to complete and will provide invaluable information for the Committee, which can then forward the information to the Building Committee and architect for inclusion into the final design.

“Our committee is the Academy Community Center Advisory Committee, and our mission is to systematically collect information from the public as to what residents would most like to see for both activities and features in the building and to collate that information in a meaningful way and pass that on to the Building Committee, which will be working with the architect to implement the community’s preferences,” said Stableford. “The survey is one of several actions we will take to collect information from the public.”

At a referendum earlier this year, voters determined the best use for the former Academy School building was to turn the facility into a community center. According to a posting on the town’s website, the survey is intended to provide greater insight into needs that are “currently unmet or underserved by existing town facilities and services.”

The survey is available at madisonct.org/Academysurvey and will remain accessible until Tuesday, Jan. 13.

Q-Code-Academy Survey.pdf