After Devereaux Raises Concerns, Selectmen Vote 3-0 to Postpone Approval of Contract for Local Taxpayer Survey

After one member voiced concerns that the town had talked to just one company about administering a survey to identify taxpayer priorities, the Board of Selectmen on Tuesday voted unanimously to postpone approval of an approximately $20,000 contract for the project.

In creating, running and analyzing something as consequential as the town-wide survey, gathering data that likely would inform future funding decisions, “we have a duty to talk to more than one provider and we have not done that,” Selectman Kit Devereaux said during a regular Board meeting. 

“This may be the best possible solution,” she said at the meeting, held in Town Hall. “But unless we talk to others, we have no way of knowing.”

After some discussion, First Selectman Kevin Moynihan, Selectman Nick Williams and Devereaux voted 3-0 to table its approval of a contract with Glastonbury-based GreatBlue Research.

Moynihan said there’s a “very limited market” in Connecticut research firms that conduct surveys of this kind, that he had obtained positive references for GreatBlue from area municipalities such as Greenwich and that the company came back with a number that falls within the $20,000 project budget. 

“We wanted to stay with a Connecticut firm which does a national practice,” Moynihan said. 

He later added, “I am very pleased now that we have checked the references.”

Under the draft agreement, obtained by NewCanaanite.com through a formal request, GreatBlue would conduct 400 telephone interviews as well as “an unlimited number of digital surveys” to be completed during a set timeframe not to exceed three weeks. The survey would include no more than 40 questions and would take no more than 10 minutes to complete, under the draft agreement. The town would supply names with residents’ phone numbers and email addresses, and pay $19,500 to GreatBlue for creating and administering the survey, analyzing responses and presenting results. 

According to a timetable outlined in the draft agreement, the project would take up to about three months from start to finish.

Asked by Williams whether she wanted to see a formal request for proposals or ‘RFP’ go out for companies to bid on the project, Devereaux said that she only wanted the town to talk to others.  

She referred to the prospect of a University of Connecticut-run survey. When Moynihan responded that UConn proposed a cost-prohibitive $31,000 project, Devereaux said, “But you did not talk to them about what we could or could not afford.”

When Moynihan said, “I don’t want to go to a more expensive process,” she responded that “talking to other providers isn’t expensive.”

It’s “just good business,” Devereaux said.

Williams said he was “certainly OK with delaying this, with summer upon us.”

“It seem like something better for the fall anyway,” he said.

Moynihan said the plan called for GreatBlue to start its research in the beginning of September. 

“So we are probably putting this off until the fourth quarter,” Moynihan said.

Formal budget discussions in past years have started at the selectmen level in December, though in 2018 officials from elected and appointed bodies including the Boards of Selectmen, Education and Finance, as well as the Town Council, met in November for a multi-board workshop. There, they decided to conduct a survey of residents to better understand their spending priorities. Saying they faced a lack of funds, members of the Board of Finance decided in January to postpone the funding of the survey until the next fiscal year, which starts July 1.