The Town of Okotoks wants feedback on various town services.

They've launched a 2025 budget survey to get an idea of what service levels community members would like to see.

Mayor Tanya Thorn explains that the goal is to garner feedback from a broad range of Okotokians.

"One person may think that lane swimming at 5:30 in the morning is the most important thing out there. that might be important to me, but I don't know if it's important to others in the community. The budget survey is really trying to link community feelings to service expectations."

The survey covers a broad range of services including pathways, transit, RCMP, fire services, snow removal, and street sweeping. Along with each service, the survey asks if participants would like to see an increase or decrease, or if they'd like the level to stay the same.

In September, town council will take a look at the survey's findings and evaluate the town's services ahead of budget deliberations in November.

The budget feedback page includes a helpful tool to demonstrate the value of each service.

"We've created what's called the 'tax receipt,' so it allows you to go in, put your assessment value for your home, and for all the town provides, it will calculate for you how much you pay over the course of the year for that service... You don't even have to have your assessment notice, you can just go onto the site, just put in your address, and it will come back and tell you what your 2024 assessment was," explains Thorn.

She says it provides a great perspective on the value of each individual service as opposed to all of them at once.

"For me, just off the top of my head, for fire and police, I pay $200 a year on my taces to have that service delivered. So it allows me to look at that and go 'Okay, so $200 a year is what I pay for 24/7 fire and police. Do I think that I need to increase that, do I keep it the same, or do I want to decrease that?'"

The survey is open until June 9.