Thank you for your participation and contribution to your Neighborhood Plan Update from the March 2009 meeting through the May 2010 Town Hall meetings and the online survey. Your input in creating the updates and your help prioritizing the Action Steps will guide the Implementation Phase, which we are just about to start. Implementation will involve a partnership of community members, community organizations, the City and funders. We look forward to working with you on the Strategies and Action Steps to bring about your community’s Vision and Goals.
The May 2010 Town Hall and web surveys results are now posted to our website. Click on the following link if you wish to see what your fellow community members think: http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/Planning/Neighborhood_Planning/Overview/ (Editor’s note: You can go directly to the survey result PDF here if you prefer.)
Your commitment to your community is further demonstrated by the hundreds of Action Team members signed up to implement the Action Steps. City Departments will be activating the relevant Action Teams as we start our work in your neighborhood. If you did not sign up, but are interested, please contact your Neighborhood District Coordinator: Yun Pitre (yun.pitre@seattle.gov) if you are in Othello or North Rainier; or Steve Louie (steve.louie@seattle.gov) if you are in North Beacon Hill. In the meantime, you can keep up to date on our progress via our website and Facebook page.
Again, thank you for your commitment to your neighborhood. We are excited to begin our shared work plan in your neighborhood.
Thanks for posting Wendy. That is pretty interesting. I distinctly remember people adding their own strategies at the May meeting, including the creation of the family bike and pedestrian circulation plan and the urban agriculture project at Jefferson Park. Other people put dots on the added ideas. There were a lot on the bike and pedestrian plan idea (like 25 or something). I don’t see any of those community ideas recorded here at all. What happened to them?
I’m not sure. I also think maybe they didn’t include results from the Beacon Hill Festival, where they also got a lot of feedback.
It’s interesting to see how different some of the results are between the online results and the town hall results, although just giving the vote counts instead of qualifying them as a percentage of the total for each voting method means a direct comparison is misleading. But there’s still some insight to be gained.
I’m surprised “Additional Strategy: Supporting a safe and healthy community” got 99 votes at the town hall and not a single vote online. Maybe that’s because it wasn’t on the online version — I don’t remember if it was or not. But it really stands out in the survey because unlike all the other options it’s not a strategy — it’s an aspiration. Why did so many people in the physical world vote for something that has no actionable component? Was it the first choice people were presented with? Did someone make a persuasive speech for this option? Was there peer pressure after someone influential was seen voting for it? Or did 99 people at the town hall genuinely think that aspiration is so important they should spend one of their votes on it instead of something with an associated action?
I’m really glad DPD is looking to gather community input in a number of ways, and it looks to me like the online survey may very well have reached a demographic that is not well represented at town halls and other physical gatherings. Or maybe it just reached people who think differently in front of a computer than they do in a crowd. Survey design and methodology can have a huge impact on results. When they release these, I’d like to see them provide background information on how they design the different inputs, control for variables and qualify the data.
Wendi, I don’t think DPD was behind the survey at the Festival. I’m pretty sure that was an independant, but similar, effort. Are you referring to this:
http://beaconhill.seattle.wa.us/2010/06/15/neighborhood-plan-update-survey-results-posted/
The independant survey seemed more meaningful by allowing a vote of the level of approval/disapproval for each item rather than simply putting a dot next to a concept you like. The DPD survey allowed you to put multiple dots on one concept, skewing the results a bit. I’m not sure if the online survey allowed voting more than once for a single item. Also, the DPD survey didn’t allow voicing disapproval of a concept, which I thought was an important aspect of the independant survey.