Share Your Voice in Staunton's Community Survey

Every two years, the City of Staunton conducts a community survey to gather resident input. This helps City Council and staff understand what matters most and where limited funding should be focused. The cyclical nature of the survey will also help the city to build trend data.

Staunton is doing this through the National Community Survey (NCS), giving our community members an opportunity to answer questions covering a wide range of topics including city services, utilities, safety, and quality of life.

Latest Survey:

Fall 2025 -> Results in Feb. 2026

Approximately 3,000 randomly selected City of Staunton households received invitations to participate in the most recent survey by mail. The survey began Sept. 30 and closed Nov. 11. Randomly selected households could participate online or by mailing back a paper survey that was sent to every address with a postage paid return envelope. The survey had a response rate of 16 percent.

In addition to the randomly sampled survey, a community-wide online version of the survey is also made available to all residents. This survey ran from Oct. 28 to Nov. 11. The date are offset in an effort to stop a randomly selected household from accidentally filling out the open survey by mistake. 

Results 

These latest results are benchmarked against more than 400 other other communities that have administered the survey in the last five years along with a separate subset of communities that are more similar to Staunton called "custom benchmarks." These 42 communities have a population under 35,000 and a median household income between $50,000 and $75,000. 

The results also show trends from early 2024 to late 2025. The survey highlights the statistically significant changes which are +/- 6%

View the 2025 One Page Summary (PDF)
View the 2025 Full Results (PDF)
Use this Interactive Report

Presentation slides to City Council of 2025 Results (PDF)
Video presentation to City Council - Feb. 26, 2026

 Previous Results 

View the 2024 One Page Summary (PDF)
View the 2024 Full Results (PDF)
View the Survey Results Presentation to City Council

The survey is conducted through a partnership with Polco and the National Research Center, using a platform utilized by hundreds of communities in nearly every U.S. state.