Longboat Key earns high marks in 2025 Citizen Survey

The 2025 Annual Citizen Survey results show Longboat Key residents are still overall satisfied with the town and its services, while key issues for residents have remained steady over the last three years. 

Longboat Key has conducted an annual citizen survey for five years. This year, 8,090 mailers went to residents with an individual code to submit the anonymous survey. In total, 1,126 residents completed the survey, which meant a response rate of 13.9%. 

Of those surveyed, 28.2% were year-round residents and 71.3% were seasonal, with the largest group of seasonal residents being people who stay on the island for six to seven months. 

The town continues to score highly on quality of life and being a desirable place to live, according to the respondents. In the 2025 survey, 97.1% of residents rated the town’s quality of life as “excellent” or “good.” 

Additionally, the town’s emergency services rate highly with 85.9% of respondents “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” with the police department’s services. The fire rescue department received an 84.8% approval rating for the same metric. 

The survey is clear, though: Traffic remains a top issue. 

About 56.7% of the open-ended comments left on the survey addressed concerns about traffic congestion, road conditions or pedestrian safety. Only about 18.7% of respondents expressed any level of satisfaction with the flow of traffic on Longboat Key. 

Similarly, 98% of respondents said it was either “very important” or “somewhat important” for the town to address traffic congestion and safety. 

Traffic congestion also remained one of the top three important issues to Longboat Key residents, ranking first over the past three years. Since 2023, traffic congestion has stayed at the top of priorities, followed by property insurance costs. 

The third most important issue to residents was red tide in 2023 and beach erosion in 2024 and 2025. 

Stephen Neely with the University of South Florida, who compiles the survey results, presented the results to the town commission. 

He said, though some results have remained the same, other data changes yield questions for town commissioners and staff to further evaluate in the following years’ surveys. 

While quality of life ratings remained relatively the same from 2024 to 2025, there was a small dip in “excellent” responses. This is understandable after experiences like Hurricanes Helene and Milton, Neely said. 

On the contrary, satisfaction with the town’s communications saw a slight increase from 2024 to 2025, something uncommon after natural disasters, which, according to Neely, is a credit to the town’s efforts. 

“This is not a trend we typically see after a severe natural disaster or emergency,” Neely said. “This is the opposite of what we normally see.” 

At the presentation, Neely said familiarity with town amenities remained mixed. About 55.7% of respondents were “not very familiar” or “not at all familiar” with Quick Point Nature Preserve. But residents were more familiar with other parks like Bayfront Park and Joan M. Durante Park. 

“There is still some room for increasing awareness,” Neely said. “And I think awareness is one of the key themes, or takeaways, from the survey this year.” 

New questions in this year’s survey asked residents how familiar they are with government services like the wellness checks offered by the Longboat Key Fire Rescue Department and potential bill adjustments for repaired water leaks. 

Overall, respondents showed low familiarity. For example, 60.8% said they were not familiar with the wellness checks, and 72.3% said they were not familiar with the bill adjustments. 

“This does show some opportunity to raise awareness on some of these key service offerings,” Neely said.

The annual citizen survey is one of the key methods for town commissioners to gather information about residents' priorities before heading into the next budget cycle. 

The town commission held a strategic planning retreat on April 21 and will hold the first fiscal year 2026 budget workshop on May 19. 

To view the full survey results, visit the town's website at LongboatKey.org.