A Radnor Township survey that could influence the 2012 budget and future official actions found that residents are supportive of the township’s financial support of the Radnor Memorial Library, Wayne Art Center and Wayne Senior Center.

The survey of 320 residents of various ages and incomes who lives throughout the township also found that nearly half of those surveyed were somewhat supportive of the township selling its nearly brand new, $16 million municipal building.

“The information in this survey will help us… We have limited resources and we have to decide how to spend them,” commissioner Elaine Paul Schaefer said last month when the results were presented by the Impact Group, the Ohio marketing firm that performed the survey and accompanying focus groups.

Schaefer said, “having an accurate understanding of which services and programming our residents feel are most important will be extremely helpful during the budgeting process.” 

The survey also addressed how residents feel about funding open space purchases.

As the township will start the public portion of the 2012 budget crafting this month, the results from the survey, taken in June, may crop up in discussions on where funds will be spent.

Forty-three percent of those surveyed said they were “somewhat supportive” of Radnor Township using tax dollars to maintain and operate local mansions such as the Willows and Creutzberg, that are currently owned by the Township? Twenty-one percent said they were “very supportive” of that.

However, 38 percent said they were “very unsupportive” of paying additional taxes to operate and maintain vintage mansions such as the Willows and Creutzberg that are currently owned by the Township?

(Read all of the survey questions and results in the pdf section of this article.)

The survey also asked questions of trust in local government officials. The Board of Commissioners did not rank high in public trust.

“We obviously have a lot of work to do in restoring faith in government,” said Radnor commissioner John Nagle.

In the survey, 60 percent of residents polled were women and 47 percent of them lived in Radnor for more than 21 years.

41 percent of those who participated in the survey were 55 or older, while 8 percent were 18 to 24 years old.

Twenty-six percent declined to give their household income level, but 20 percent were $200,000 or higher while 12.8 percent income was less than $50,000.