Full Notification

BOROUGH OF FAIR HAVEN 

Re: Release of the 2026 Master Plan Community Survey Results

To the residents of Fair Haven:

Between March 16 and April 7, 2026, the Borough invited residents to share their views on the future of Fair Haven. The survey's purpose is to assist us and our in identifying themes that should be discussed with the community as part of our master plan process. We received 629 responses. We are grateful to everyone who took the time to participate, and we are releasing the results in full today.

Release of the 2026 Master Plan Community Survey Results - via Borough website

The files are large.  Please visit the Borough website, via the link above on your desktop or laptop, to review both the Survey Results Summary and Raw Data pages.
 

A few notes on how to read these materials:

• The Survey Summary is an attempt to describe in a concise manner the information contained in over 600 responses.  It is not meant to recommend, conclude or otherwise create any Borough action. The open-ended summary is a concise view of what residents said, as accurately and proportionally as the responses and a summary of this nature allows. It identifies recurring themes and indicates roughly how often each appeared, including views that ran in opposite directions on the same subject. It does not rank priorities, weigh one view higher than another, draw conclusions, or recommend any course of action. Those judgments belong to the public process that still lies ahead, not to these documents.

• This was an open survey, not a scientific poll. Any resident could respond. The 629 participants are not a random sample of the Borough and should not be treated as statistically representative of all residents. Some groups may be over- or under-represented. The results are a substantial and valuable body of public input; they are not a measurement of public opinion in the way a scientifically polled sample would be.

• Several questions were open text boxes rather than multiple choice. Questions 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10 asked for written answers even though they read like yes/no or rating questions. To report these numerically, answers were grouped into categories, with a separate category for conditional or undecided responses rather than forcing them into "yes" or "no." The raw data is included in the accompanying Excel file, so anyone can review those answers directly.

• The Survey Results file has not been edited. Responses appear as submitted, including typographical errors, and a small number of test entries made while the survey was being built. There are individual responses and opinions here which may name specific individuals, businesses or other community members. These are opinions not fact, and do not represent the opinions or beliefs of the Planning Board, the Governing Body, Borough employees or any other board, committee or department in the Borough.

The Planning Board will use this input as one input among several in preparing the Master Plan. We encourage you all to attend the open houses that will be held in service to the master plan process.

Thank you again to the hundreds of residents who contributed their time and their thinking to this process.
 

Sincerely,

Mayor Josh Halpern and Planning Board Chairman, Frederick Rolff

Borough of Fair Haven