CROWN POINT | In a move that will save the city at least $38,000, the Crown Point Redevelopment Commission decided to write and administer a citywide survey in-house as opposed to using a professional company.

The commission at its June meeting discussed sending out a survey that would provide the city with resident feedback on city development. Commission President Stephen Figurski spent the past month researching businesses in Chicago and Northwest Indiana who might be able to administer the survey.

The lowest price he found was $40,000 for a survey that would only be a random sample of city residents.

"I think ($40,000) is a little too high, a lot too high," Mayor David Uran said.

Uran estimated doing the survey in-house and sending it out with residents' water bills would cost about $2,000. He said the city could send out prepaid envelopes with the survey and would then only pay for postage for returned surveys. He also threw out the idea that the survey could include questions involving public safety and public works to spread out the estimated $2,000 cost between departments.

Commission member Mark Schweitzer asked if the commission would consider an online survey as an even cheaper method.

Figurski said the survey would contain between 10 and 20 questions that commission members and the mayor's office would create. He couldn't speculate on a timeline for when residents would find the survey in their water bills or when the received data might be compiled, although the mayor asked commission members to come with ideas for questions to the August meeting.

In other business, City Attorney David Nicholls told commission members they would have a new, nonvoting advisory member in August according to state law. The mayor will appoint the new member who will come from the Crown Point Community School Corp. board.