It's an attempt at public opinion, but it has the same failing as the 'polling' you see in media, that has No check to see if the sampling reflects the a full spectrum of the public with a balance of party, race, gender, age, income, education.     The only thing the city will likely get is activist response, mostly from Democrats, (by registration numbers alone), that is not fair representation of the community.

Nice attempt in theory, lousy way to get true public opinion, including those who are not oriented to politics or newspapers.    The better solution is to hire a professional poll organization and do the poll right.  As usual the council will instead provide a medium that attracts self affirming interest groups that results in confirmation bias.  

That's standard practice by both political parties and media with ideological bias.  Neither party can claim 'higher ground' until they show a sincere interest if that portion of the public who resents and ignores them.