By Friday, Peachtree City planning officials will close off accepting survey responses from more than 1,000 citizens randomly selected to help shape the city’s future for the next 20 years.

The surveys were due last Friday, and by Monday afternoon about 425 had already been returned; the city also mailed reminder notices Monday to those who have yet to return their surveys.

The idea behind targeting specific residents and addresses was to make the results more reliable, but all residents are encouraged to participate in the less-scientific portion of the survey. Anyone can download a copy of the survey online at www.peachtree-city.org/develop/planning/compplan/survey062706.pdf.

The surveys can be turned in to City Hall, the city library or faxed back in to a number listed on the form. No deadline has been set to have these surveys in.

Elizabeth Keysar, a city resident who helped formulate the survey along with the rest of the comprehensive plan committee, said that the non-targeted surveys could be filled out by anyone, so those results won’t be as statistically reliable as the ones which were mailed directly to residents.

“We’re hoping for a 50 percent response rate,” Keysar said of the survey mailings. “70 percent would be awesome.”

Among the important issues citizens can address on the survey is the potential use of annexation to expand the city limits. On one question, citizens are asked whether they would prefer to see the city’s population grow by using annexation or not.

Also, the survey asks the respondent to rank the importance of expanding the city limits by annexation in the future.

The survey also seeks data about how residents use golf carts in their daily lives.

Keysar noted that the survey also has a place where residents can add additional comments on any planning or survey issue if they wish.

Addresses and names for the 1,000 randomly-distributed surveys were culled using the city’s stormwater utility database, which provided the owners of residential properties in town.

Also, 18 percent of the surveys were targeted specifically to residents of rental properties, said Planning Assistant Daniel Norris. That’s because 18 percent of the city’s total dwellings are rental properties, a figure determined in an exhaustive data review of each individual parcel in the city, Norris noted.

The number of surveys sent to renters were evenly divided between persons living in an apartment setting and persons renting a single-family home, Norris said. Single-family homes used for rental housing were identified with assistance from the city’s code enforcement department, he added.

The homeowners targeted by the survey were selected at random by counting out every 12th person on the city’s stormwater database, which generated the number of persons the city wanted to reach with the survey, Norris explained.

Exactly 1,035 surveys were mailed out, Norris said.

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