DEL MAR — About 6,000 Del Mar residents and business and property owners will soon receive a postcard asking them to provide input about the what, where and how much for a new City Hall.
The mailers will direct people to take a 10-minute, 15-question survey on the city website that asks whether they agree with the conclusions of about 40 people who participated in a December workshop.
Hard-copy surveys will be available for those without a computer.
A draft survey was presented to council members Dec. 9 but most said it needed work. It was originally slated to take about 30 minutes to complete.
Staff reworded some of the questions and eliminated a section on how the plan should be implemented.
“The survey is better,” Councilman Don Mosier said. “It looks good to me.”
Respondents were originally going to be given about a month to login and complete the survey, but Mosier said that was too long.
“More immediacy … is better,” he said. People will now have about two weeks to complete the questionnaire.
Residents will also soon be asked whether the Garden Del Mar project should include residential units. Mosier said he wanted at least three months in between the two surveys.
Staff expects to present the City Hall survey results to council by Feb. 18.
Councilman Terry Sinnott said one of the last conversations he had with former Mayor Lou Terrell, who died Jan. 3 trying to save his dog from an oncoming train, was about replacing the aging facility.
“He was coming to me and saying, ‘We can do this. We can do the City Hall. We can raise money. We should be moving forward on it,’” Sinnott said. “Now that’s the kind of positive guy he was. He really wanted us to move forward on it, so let’s move forward. Let’s keep moving.”
