The National Community Survey

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Franklin Community Survey of how city government is serving residents

2025 Franklin Community Survey

The Results Are In!

The results are in! In Spring 2025, the City of Franklin partnered with Polco/National Resource Center to perform a community-wide survey of Franklin residents to get their perspectives about the quality of the community and available services as well as residents' priorities for Franklin.

Here are some highlights of the survey:

Highest-performing areas:

Residents praise Franklin’s leadership, with many related items surpassing national averages and increasing since 2022, including:

The value of services for the taxes paid to Franklin (72% to 80%)
Treating all residents fairly (65% to 76%)
The job Franklin government does at welcoming resident involvement (65% to 74%)

The economy remains a community strength for Franklin, as many items received ratings much higher than the national benchmarks.

Franklin as a place to visit (94%)
Overall economic health (91%)
Vibrancy of downtown/commercial area (88%)

Health and wellness opportunities received high praise from respondents and many items scored higher than national comparison communities.

Health services (87%)
Overall health and wellness opportunities (86%)
Availability of affordable quality health care (80%)

Lowest-performing areas:

Although inline with national trends and on par with national benchmarks, affordability is concern for residents:

Availability of affordable quality childcare/preschool (45%)
Cost of living (29%)
Availability of affordable quality housing (20%

Ratings for ease of travel in Franklin indicate a potential focus area for the City.

Traffic flow on major streets (41%)
Ease of travel by bicycle (37%)
Ease of public transportation (26%)

Other notable results:

In a question unique to Franklin’s survey, residents were asked about their satisfaction with the City’s management of growth, with 74% of respondents expressing they very or somewhat satisfied.

Residents were split in their support of higher taxes or fees if local or state transportation projects could be completed in less time:

A little more than 4 in 10 supported higher taxes or fees, while around 5 in 10 opposed.

Residents were also asked if they agreed that various amenities were needed in Franklin.

The top amenities residents strongly or somewhat agreed were needed were:

Dedicated Farmer’s Market (79%)
Additional Recreation Amenities (64%)
Enhanced Transportation Options (62%)

Areas of greatest change since 2022:

Of the 123 evaluative questions included on both the 2022 and current survey iterations:

20 ratings had upward trends
101 ratings statistically similar to previous results
2 ratings decreased since 2022

Changes are considered statistically significant if the 2025 rating was +/- 6.7% from the previous survey effort. The most significant of those trends are listed below.

Increases

Availability of affordable quality mental health care (+18%)
Snow removal (+17%)
Bus or transit services (+13%)
Treating all residents fairly (+12%)
Informing residents about issues facing the community (+11%)

Decreases

Franklin as a place to retire (-11%)
Employment opportunities (-11%)

Survey Materials

For more detail, please click on any of these materials:

* These reports contain anonymous citizen responses to question of what is the most pressing issue in Franklin today. They are presented verbatim and have not been edited in anyway for content.

Timeline of the 2025 Franklin Community Survey

March 17 - Postcards Postcard invitations to online survey sent to 3,000 households

March 24 - Packet with printed survey, cover letter, and postage-paid return envelope sent

April 14 - Open participation survey begins

April 28 - Scientific and open participation ends

July - Results available

Previous Survey Results

Go to previous Franklin Community Survey Results.

About The National Community Survey

The National Community Survey™ (The NCS™) was among the first scientific surveys developed to gather resident opinion on a range of community issues, and has been used in more than 600 jurisdictions across 46 states. The NCS™ is a high-quality cost-effective scientific survey of resident opinion and an important benchmarking tool that allows for comparison among communities. Communities using The NCS™ have reported that the tool helped improve performance, strengthen communications with community stakeholders, and identify clear priorities for use in goal and budget setting.

Please click here to find out more about the communities and regions represented in the survey.

About National Research Center powered by Polco

The National Research Center (NRC) powered by Polco gives local governments, and other public sector organizations, the data they need to make more informed decisions. For over 25 years, the NRC has worked with hundreds of jurisdictions nationwide. NRC is best known for national benchmarking surveys, such as The National Community Survey (The NCS), and custom survey research. This benchmark database holds hundreds of thousands of resident opinions – making it the largest of its kind in the United States.

Polco Logo In 2019, NRC merged with Polco creating the gold standard in civic engagement. Now NRC provides local government leaders with the best in survey research alongside today’s most innovative online civic engagement capabilities. NRC at Polco is a team of leading experts in the survey research industry. Our experienced practitioners are thought-leaders in the field, authoring numerous articles and books, and presenting research at conferences around the nation. To find out more about the National Research Center, visit the Polco site.