A couple thousand Lawrence residents soon will have the chance to rate how well city government is functioning.

Lawrence city commissioners at their Tuesday evening meeting agreed to move ahead with a citizen’s survey that will gauge how the public feels about City Hall topics such as police, fire, streets, utilities, taxes and more.

Olathe-based ETC Institute is expected to start mailing out surveys to residents in the next several days, with the hope of having preliminary results ready to present to city commissioners in late June as they consider priorities for the 2016 budget.

The survey will not be mailed to every resident in the city. Instead, ETC will mail surveys to a couple thousand selected households in order to get at least 800 responses that will give the firm a scientifically valid sample size of the Lawrence population. The seven-page survey will be conducted via mail, phone or Internet, depending on the preference of the survey recipient.

Among the questions that will be asked are:

• Pick your first, second and third priorities from the following projects: “Develop public safety facilities (i.e. police and fire); support for economic impact initiatives (conference center, tax incentives, etc.); support for arts and culture (cultural plan, community art, streetscapes, etc.); develop parks and recreation facilities (i.e. trails, athletic fields, pools, etc.); repair and restore deteriorating infrastructure (streets, city buildings, sidewalks, etc.); develop non-motorized transportation infrastructure (bicycle lanes, sidewalks, etc.)”

• Several questions asking respondents to rate on a scale of one to five the quality of police, fire and emergency medical services, utilities, traffic management, code enforcement, public transportation, parks and recreation and customer service by city staff.

• Questions related to the perceptions of downtown, such as the availability of parking for both vehicles and bicycles.

• Question about the value residents receive for their tax dollars.

The city had ETC conduct similar surveys in 2007 and 2011. Commissioners will pay $29,500 for the survey, which will include a report from ETC that will compare Lawrence’s survey results with other survey results of other similar-sized communities. The study also will compare Lawrence’s results with past results from the two previous Lawrence surveys.

Commissioners approved the survey on a 4-1 vote. Commissioner Matthew Herbert voted against the survey. He said he thought it was too expensive and perhaps was unnecessary because three of the five commissioners had just talked to several thousand voters as part of their campaigns to win election on the City Commission.

In other business, commissioners:

• Unanimously approved an incentives package for Integrated Animal Health, a biosciences company that is moving its headquarters from Australia to the Bioscience and Technology Business Center on Kansas University’s West Campus. The city and the county will provide a total of $215,000 over three years to assist the company with rent and relocation costs. The company is expected to produce nine jobs paying an average salary of $113,000 a year within the next three years. It hopes to have 50 jobs in the next 10 years that will pay an average salary of $83,000 a year.

• Agreed to accept bids for about $130,000 worth of sidewalk gap repair projects that would be completed this summer.

• Deferred action for two weeks on a request by an East Lawrence developer related to a zoning issue for a bar/bistro at 804 Pennsylvania St.

• Agreed that only two city commissioners — Mayor Jeremy Farmer and Commissioner Leslie Soden — will attend a Justice Matters forum Thursday night at the Lied Center. City Attorney Toni Wheeler advised that a majority of the City Commission should not attend the forum because it could result in a violation of the Kansas Open Meetings Act. The forum will include a discussion on mental health, affordable housing and other topics of community interest. The forum is not entirely open to the public, which caused concern by Wheeler. The Justice Matters group plans to offer free tickets to members of area church congregations. A limited number of tickets to the general public also will be available.