Encinitas approves $10K for survey
Last night Encinitas council members Jerome Stocks, Maggie Houlihan, Dan Dalager and mayor Jim Bond voted to spend $10,000 to try and see if 300 random stay-at-home moms, isolated senior citizens and shut-in hermits like living Encinitas. Teresa Barth did not vote because she is out of town, I really hope she would have voted NO on this.
From the NCT article:
By: ADAM KAYE - Staff Writer
ENCINITAS ---- The Encinitas City Council on Wednesday authorized spending $10,200 to survey residents on their satisfaction with City Hall.
The vote was 4-0. Councilwoman Teresa Barth was absent on a long-planned trip.
"This will give us an annual report card," said Councilman Jerome Stocks. "How are we doing? How are we serving you? I think that's really valuable information."
Before any of the 300 telephone surveys are conducted, however, a subcommittee of Barth and Stocks will collaborate with staffers and an Oregon-based consultant to develop 30 questions.
Some points,
*30 questions is an insane amount of questions to ask over the phone, especially when cold calling someone. The reality is that whomever answers their home phone (I assume the pollers will call increasingly unpopular landlines, not cell phones) and if someone is actually home and agrees to answer questions; he or she is going to get very tired by question 10 and will most likely hang up. Then the poller will probably just fudge the other 20 questions instead of starting over with a new person (I have friends who did this sort of work in college and admitted to filling out the blanks themselves just to get the job done).
*If the city had any web savvy they could post a 30 question poll on their website. The newspapers then report that the city is putting this poll on the web (free marketing). Then people can log on and do a quick registration so that they can only take the poll once. Since this stupid little blog gets over 500 unique hits a day and the Encinitas chamber of commerce reported their site got over 250,000 hits in six weeks I think finding 300 people to take an online poll wouldn't be a problem.
*The city council members and staff could go around town in on a Saturday morning with a clipboard and ask people in the flesh questions about Encinitas.
*I can tell you right now that the results of the poll will be overwhelmingly positive because Encinitas is the greatest small town on Earth. But the fact that living here by the beach in America is super awesome doesn't really reflect the performance of the council, staff and city services.
See previous post about the last survey: Leucadia!: Small Town Yokels Ripped Off for $10,000
I can tell you from the faked polls that they did for Prop A and C that what ever they do won't reflect the true feelings of the citizens of this city.
ReplyDeleteWe need to express our feelings at the ballot box and vote the idiots out of office.
I haven't seen Barth taking a position on anything yet. She has just gone along with the good old boys and the developers. Someone please tell, with examples, if my observations of Barth are inaccurate because I don't see that she is the fresh face we all thought she would be.
PUBLISH THE QUESTIONS ON THE CITY WEBSITE AND RUN SOME ADDS IN LOCAL PAPERS TO PUBLICIZE IT.COST WILL BE UNDER 1K. NO EFFIN BRAINER. WE NEED A REAL CITY MANAGER.
ReplyDeleteCITY HALL WATCHER IS FULL OF CRAP ABOUT BARTH.
THE AVOCADO STREET MAFIA RULES.
The city survey needs some questions about the BIG debt the residents are facing. Without a peep of concern, the city council takes over the sales tax generating Mossy Chevolet property for a public works yard. Today's NCT business section has more bad news for Encinitas sales tax - CompUSA is closing the Encinitas store. If you travel El Camino Real, you will notice that the Red Robin restaurant closed. The movie theater closed in January. Harloff BMW was sold to a large company. Are the four council members left over from the previous administration concerned?
ReplyDeleteI was sorry Teresa could not be at the meeting due to a long before planned trip, according to NCT.
ReplyDeleteI thought Dan Dalager showed a bit of independent thinking when he said the survey people would not get the extra money they were asking for new questions. Or is that what he meant? Check out the article that JP linked at NCT.
James Bond gives lip service to cutting costs, then he goes right along with this. I hope that when Teresa comes back it can be reagendized. This would be a very misleading "report card," as JP suggests. What we like about this location is not necessarily thanks to City Council (City Councils past) and staff, but despite them.
If it's to be a "report card" as stated by Jerome Stocks, then I would give them a D, except Teresa, who hasn't had a full chance, yet, to weigh in.
ReplyDeleteThere was also a good letter to the editor in today's NCT, from Jerry Louis, about Council's decision to appoint the partisan, pro-development candidate for the position on the Planning Commission, on Feb. 21, instead of the best qualified individual, Lisa Shaffer. "Lisa is a nationally recognized expert on sustainability and has a doctorate in public policy."
We would have been fortuante to have her expertise. Thanks, Lisa, for offering your services, for volunteering to help our community.
The citizens who follow these decisions know the majority male voting bloc now on Council made a big mistake, again. I too, am disappointed that thanks to Stocks, Bond and Dalager we "lost a valuable opportunity to move our community forward out of our mire of inactivity."
JP is right. This is another warm fuzzy moment for Council, trying to appear to care what the people want.
ReplyDeleteA more effective, less expensive method to find out would be on the City website, as suggested.
I would think $10,000 would be better used constructing the park at the Hall property. That amount of money would buy a lot of fencing
ReplyDeletefor the off-leash dog area.
Encinitas voters need a ballot initative prohibiting council from hiring consultants. Why exactly are we paying city staff, if not to do the work being outsourced to unaccountable private firms?
$10,000 to poll 300 people is $33 per person. The city could achieve the same results on it's website for almost free assuming they have a full time webmaster on salary.
ReplyDeleteI thought this kind of stuff would stop after Kerry Miller left town.
ReplyDeleteanonymous 11:46. Name calling lets us all see your character. How do you get a random survey on a website? Only the people that blog here will go there and we are not even close to representing what the majority of this city thinks.
ReplyDeleteAs I thought some person would do, you did, support Barth without facts. Why, because I am right and you don't have any facts. She is one of the boys and doesn't take a position on anything that will make a difference. Where is her voice?
I dunno, this blog gets 500 unique hits a day but only about a dozen people post comments. Judging from the personal e-mails I get there is a wide variety of opinions out there.
ReplyDeleteThe main thing that bothers me is paying an Oregon firm 10 grand. You could set up a booth at the farmer's market and send pollers to the beach access points to talk to people in person. You could get 300 people in one day with say, 5 or 6 pollers. Pay them $100 bucks each for the day. Hell, I will do it.
...at the risk of feeding the troll-meisters... Teresa has only been on the council 3 months. She is showing respect and observing protocol by not going in there with guns blazing and potentially alienating herself. She is only one voice and is quite skilled, after working for 25 years for the Del Mair fairgrounds, in dealing with groups of people. What she's doing right now is listening and learning. As to how you get a survey on a web site, well, gee, first you type it on a keyboard, then you make a file and then you download it on the web site program. Then you put an article in the newspaper. Maybe you print two of 'em! For people who don't have computers, there could be a pile of surveys right there at the City Hall. That alone would balance out all us bloggers who obviously don't know anything. That's right, JP is SATAN, and we are all under his spell!!!
ReplyDelete$10K would be better spent on some porta potties for the beaches.
ReplyDelete$10K would be better spent on some landscaping for hwy101.
10K would be better spent on sidewalks for hwy101.
RSPB
When is the city going to get those damn pumps outta my park?? It hasn't rained for 4 days and NO rain in called for the next 7 days!! I'm tired of seeing those damn pumps everytime I go home!!
Out damn PUMPS out!!!
m.fleener, I thought you were educated. Do you know what "Random" means in a survey? You cannot survey just one group of community activists and get a true picture of what ALL the city thinks. Simply putting something on the internet or web page will not get the true feelings of the city. It will only get the opinions of the few (500 blog readers according to JP) out of 62,000 residents.
ReplyDeleteWho is going to develop the survey? Are the questions leading? Are they suggestive? I think the city consultants will twist the survey to say what their masters want it to say, like they did in prop C. I agree the 10,000 dollars is a waste of money for this city council. They certainly could have a professional build the questions and have city staff make random calls. There are several simple ways to generate randomness that are easy.
We are already paying the city staff so we should use them. It doesn't appear they are overworked.
Barth has done nothing and is obviously under the influence of the good old boys. If you have influence over her you need to spark her into action. It's the same old story at city hall. "Lets build edifices to ourselves at the taxpayers expense." She doesn't seem to care.
City Hall Watcher,
ReplyDeleteName some things that Barth should have done already that would have satisfied you.
I think you are actually a Dalager/Stocks shill trying to trick Barth and Barth supporters into doing rash things.
So what did she do wrong already? Lets hear it.
I noticed at the last closed session, and last open Council Meeting, this past Wednesday, 2/28, Teresa Barth was absent, on a pre-planned trip.
ReplyDeleteIt is concerning, because it has been difficult for Maggie to stand alone, in the past. When every vote matters, I don't think closed sessions, in particular, should be held when all five Council Members are not present.
This is particularly true because Teresa has stated in forums that every action taken (not thought processes or vote counts)should be reported in the minutes of closed sessions. Currently, Council only puts the names of the cases, to my knowledge.
For example, if Council makes a determination to take someone to court, or not to, this should be reported, out of closed session.
That's the specific example that I would hope and expect Teresa Barth to set, and a big difference she will make in City governance and integrity, following the law, and showing courtesy.
I think Teresa can and is making a difference. City Hall Watcher, I appreciate your post, except I don't agree with the last paragraph.
Also not "appreciated" is sarcastic reference to M. Fleener.
ReplyDeleteThat makes you a flamer, talking about private individuals, which distracts from the topic "Fuzzy Wate of Funds."
What we are talking about is a survey of people on the City's website, not JP's blog, here.
Yes, staff could also make calls, or people should be able to call in with their opinions . . .
JP's suggested survey design is what is called a convenience sample. If you are looking to get very accurate estimates of what the whole population thinks, a convenience sample can be problematic and misleading. This is especially likely if your convenience sample picks up people who are a poor representation of the whole population. Setting up a booth in Leucadia is likely to produce different results than if you sampled in new Encinitas. People in Leucadia are keenly aware of how behind the City is in providing adequate infrastructure.
ReplyDeleteAnother poster who snipped at Fleener alludes to the gold standard in sample surveys. This is the simple random sample. If you sample randomly, your estimates will be unbiased and your margin of errors will be meaningful (if you calculate them correctly).
If the City's population of interest is all adults in the City, the City's survey does meet the criteria to be described as a simple random sample. In a simple random sample all adults would have the same chance of being sampled. The City's survey has MANY nuances that move it away from being a simple random sample. This only matters if the bias is large enough to matter.
For the most part, it doesn't matter much to me if the estimates from the survey are mildly or moderately biased. Why? Even we did a census of the entire population and I had the true values (not estimates that you get from a sample survey) I don't see much utility from having this information. Even if they were valuable, we need a council who are going to act on what they find.
When voting 4-0 to spend the $10k on this survey there was no discussion on how the council adjusted or acted on the previous results. The survey's usefulness is dubious and it lack of use clear.
Here are some of the questions included in the survey:
1. Is Encinitas a good place to live? My view: regardless of the "sentiment" shouldn't we be constantly struggling to make it an even better place to be?
2. Are you satisfied with fire protection services? Fortunately, only a small percentage of people have needed to call upon the fire department and even that small subpopulation has little means to base an evaluation of the service. Just because lots of people say they are satisfied with the fire department doesn't mean they should be satisfied.
3. Are you satisfied with trash services? Well, trash collection is pretty straight forward and something everyone has some experience with . In the last survey only 71% said they were very satisfied. The council thinks we have very good service and I don't think they are going to revisit the trash contract. Think about this too, something is way wrong with trash service long before a large proportion of the population have complaints. The city is better off spending resources letting citizens know how to inform the city of grievances, making a record of those grievances (and remediation) are archived, and ensuring nothing is structurally wrong with the service. The way I see it is that things may need to be changed even if only a small proportion of the population are affected/aware of a problem.
4. Is the City going in the right direction? Should peoples' responses be weighted the same regardless of whether or not they have been following the city activities closely or even read the paper? Most people can't name a single council person.
5. If there were one thing the City of Encinitas could do to improve your quality of life, what would that be? There were some interesting responses. Each of the following were responses from a single respondent: 1) "Keep Leucadia Funky" 2) Make city a car-free zone, 3) Get a library. Only one out of 300 said library! The library was one of the city's biggest expenditures last year (taking us deeper in debt). I would conclude that the results of this survey item are not guiding the council actions.
Stop paying to have it asked?
The top two responses to this question: 1) Stop/control growth / developme & Reducing / managing traffic / congestion. These two got 59% of all the responses.
Let's not waste any more money on surveys that are not useful and/or used.