Key Takeaways from Community Insights Survey

Winter and Spring 2026 are an exciting time for a couple new SEMCOG initiatives:

• Convening our first-ever member “peer groups”
• Revisiting SEMCOG’s operational and fiscal resources for member communities 

To best understand how to meet the needs of our members, we administered a Community Insights survey at the end of 2025, which was sent to chief elected and appointed officials in every SEMCOG community. Many thanks to those of you who responded! We received a response from 127 of SEMCOG’s 186 member communities.

 The survey sought local leaders’ perspectives on the characteristics of their community, as well as the challenges and opportunities they face. 

Key takeaways from the survey include: 

• Over 60% of responding communities say they are facing financial challenges, with the most frequently noted challenges being:  
  • local government financing 
    
  • economic development 
    
  • road infrastructure 
    
  • water/sewer infrastructure. 
• Many communities have structural revenue constraints and sharply limited staff to address all the infrastructure and operational activities that need addressed.​ 
• The most frequently cited fiscal strategies include new efficiency measures/shared services, increased fees/taxes, and use of reserves.​ 
• Over 80 % use traditional line-item budgeting, but 45% have done some priority-based budgeting.​ 
• Areas in greatest need of efficiency/quality improvements are public works/infrastructure and community development.​ 
• According to comments around training, respondents are most interested in financial strategies/management, infrastructure/capital improvement planning (including grants), and workforce/governance/process improvements including automation.​ 
• About three-quarters of respondents prefer in-person workshops, with webinars in second place with 60%.​ 
• Over 80% of respondents prefer to connect with other leaders in-person. Remote/online meetings were in second place with 57%.​ 

So, how will we be using these results? 

SEMCOG’s Government Affairs team is planning training content for the upcoming year, based on the needs identified in the survey – especially focused on the financial challenges expressed by respondents. We’re also planning to stand up a Local Government Finance and Operations-focused implementation team – open to all SEMCOG members – to meet quarterly and discuss these topics, starting this summer. 

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