Most Prairie Village residents still say they would use a new community center that replaces the aging Paul Henson YMCA, though that proportion has decreased from four years ago.
At the same time, a majority of respondents to a new survey said they would be willing to pay higher taxes in order to build a new community center.
For years, the city has contemplated a new community center to replace the deteriorating Y at 79th Street and Mission Road, just south of City Hall and police headquarters.
A 2019 survey found broad support for the idea, but city officials wanted to see if that sentiment held up after the COVID-19 pandemic.
So, the city commissioned a new survey this year, conducted by Omaha-based firm Wiese Research Group, which polled nearly 1,500 Prairie Village households either by phone or through an online questionnaire.
The city council will now discuss what the results could mean for the future of the much-discussed community center idea.
Most residents say they would use a new center
- The new survey showed 43% of Prairie Village residents said they “definitely would” use a new community center, and another 20% said they “probably would” use it.
- That’s compared to the 2019 survey (which had a smaller sample size) that showed 59% of respondents said they would “definitely” use it and 16% said they “probably” would.
- Overall, the combined number of residents who said they would likely use it fell from 75% to 63% between the two surveys.
- An overwhelming majority of Prairie Village residents polled — 87% — said they would “definitely” cast a ballot on a community center item if it came up in a special mail-in election.
Nearly two-thirds would support raising taxes
- Meanwhile, 63% of Prairie Village residents polled in the survey said they would support a tax increase of some kind in order to pay for the building of a new community center.
- When asked about specific amounts by which taxes could go up, 54% of respondents said they would be willing to accept a bump of up to $10 more per month in taxes.
- That number fell to 46% for $15 more per month, 39% for $20 more per month, 28% for $30 more per month and just 18% for more than $30 per month.
Methodology
- In total, Wiese tallied 1,459 responses from Prairie Village households, some by phone but the vast majority through an online questionnaire.
- The online responses came after 11,745 postcards were mailed out to a random sampling of households with a link to the web-based survey.
- Wiese also queried some non-Prairie Village residents by phone who lived in zip codes deemed to be in the proposed community center’s “trade area,” including some living in Kansas City, Mo., Leawood, Mission and Overland Park, but those respondents’ answers were tallied separately from those of Prairie Village residents.
- The margin of error for the Prairie Village-only sample size was plus-minus 1.5%, based on the percentage of responses obtained.
A full breakdown of the survey, including results and methodology, is embedded below.
Loading...
Reload document 
Open in new tab Next steps:
- The city council is set to discuss the survey at its April 17 meeting.
- City Administrator Wes Jordan previously told the Post the city council needs to rely on the survey results in order to make a decision on whether or not to move forward with the decades-old community center idea.
Go deeper: Here’s who’s behind texts urging Prairie Village residents to oppose new community center
