Several thousand Lawrence residents soon will get to give City Hall a scientific earful.

The city has started its process to conduct a scientific survey to determine what city services are performing well and which ones could use a bit of improvement. This week the city will mail out more than 4,000 survey forms and ask residents to fill them out.

“If you receive the survey in the mail, please respond to the questions honestly,” Mayor Mike Amyx said. “The survey doesn’t take much time, is confidential and can yield good information for us to use in planning current and future services.”

The city last did a citizens survey in 2007. The new survey will be modeled after that one, which will allow the city to see if it has gained or lost ground in particular areas.

In 2007, the quality of street maintenance received low marks, but since then city voters approved a new infrastructure sales tax to bolster streets. The city has done its own review that has suggested street conditions have improved since the sales tax, but this will be the first formal survey asking residents what they think.

Other services that received low marks in 2007 included: management of traffic flow and congestion, planning, and development services. Services that received high marks included: fire, trash, parks and recreation, police, and water and sewer. Back in 2007, 72 percent of citizens said they were satisfied with the overall quality of city services.

The city has budgeted $30,000 to complete the survey this year. The has hired a consulting firm to conduct the survey. The survey participants were selected randomly. Results of the survey will be released later this year.