Phones have been ringing in Thousand Oaks over the past two weeks as the city polls residents to learn their opinions about the services and quality of life in the community.

The 18-minute phone survey asks how satisfied residents are with city services, the Civic Arts Plaza, the city staff and spending priorities.

“The community attitude survey is a good tool to set priorities for City Council,” said spokesperson Andrew Powers.

About 400 residents who reflect the city’s demographics will be surveyed by telephone. With questions put in random order for each call, the survey will be considered a valid sampling of city residents to enable scientific assumptions to be made about the opinions of the rest of the community. The survey costs $30,000.

Previous surveys were less scientific. They were sent randomly to every fourth house, and the order of the printed questions wasn’t varied to avoid skewing the results.

“The survey will help the city gauge resident satisfaction, set priorities and make decisions,” Powers said.

People who aren’t called needn’t worry. Early next month another layer of the community attitude survey will appear on the city’s website at www.toaks.org, where residents can give their opinion so everyone can be heard.

Postcards will be mailed next week to every household with instructions on how to take the 35-question survey online using personal identification numbers provided on the postcards. Two PINs will go out to each household for adults to use. The postcards will explain how to acquire additional PINS if they are needed.

Those without Internet access will be directed to computers at the city’s libraries.

Unlike previous surveys, this year’s questions will offer more opportunities to express satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

The city has sampled citizen’s views on planning and community issues by conducting a community attitude survey about every five years since 1969. This is the first year it’s been done by telephone and the city’s website. The city incorporated in 1964.

The last survey, the eighth taken, was in May 2004. About 27 percent of residents asked for their opinions responded.

Over the years the city has asked its residents a variety of questions, including how much they wanted an Olympic-sized swimming pool, an animal shelter, more freeway landscaping and affordable housing.