PUNTA GORDA — Of 36,000 city water consumers, 500 have voiced an opinion on a survey intended to help the City Council decide whether to spend $28 million to make the water less hard during the dry season.

The number of responses isn’t enough to make such a decision, so Mayor Bill Albers asked his fellow council members to urge residents to fill out the survey in their weekly email reports to constituents. Combined, those reports get emailed to some 4,000 residents.