A few weeks ago there was a news item that the city was spending $50,000 to contract with a consulting firm to do a survey regarding strategic planning for the next five years. If you have had enough caffeine to keep you from dozing off for a while and you have some time on your hands, check it out here. Pardon me, but for $50,000 this outfit better have a mind-reader on staff!
I've take many surveys in the course of business and I've created them using FREE survey software such as Survey Monkey. A silly name but a fine product that large corporations use. Among the problems with the survey, I see no way of qualifying the respondents. There is one for citizens, one for the council members and one for business people. All do not appear to have any way of proving who the person is. At least the citizen survey that I took did not. I clicked on the council survey and it appeared to start the same as the citizen's and unless there is something at the end of it requiring a social security number, address or something, I suspect there could be dozens of aldermen responding! I did not go through the whole thing. After all, I have to be at work in ten hours.
Past that flaw, the survey is primarily fill in the blanks. This appears to be a one survey fits all cities. That strategy certain cuts the expense of doing a little research and zeroing in on the issues of the city. After all, you can only do so much work for $50,000 and free survey software!
I dusted off my crystal ball and saw the final report. It said, "Judging from the quantity of surveys filled out seriously, the vast majority of the people appear to be satisfied with the way the city has been managed in the recent past. As there were few suggestions for the future, the majority of the citizens must be content with baseball league financing, raucous Harley Davidson parties, road pavement fashioned after the surface of the moon, a public transportation system thats not crowded, a fire station on every corner (these replace the taverns) and radium laced water that is in short supply. (The glow in the dark feature comes in handy after midnight.)
All joking aside, if I were joking, working people have much more that they'd rather do than attend meetings in the evening. The local media does a great job of informing us about the issues and the editorial pages give some a chance to make their opinion known. Ross Perot, love him or hate him, was in the data business and visioned the people being more involved in government via the Internet. I thought that was a good thing.
The concept of this five year planning survey is a good idea too. There are just too many flaws with it as it is. It should be removed, reworked and then reimplemented. Any kid on a computer at the library could do it better. In the mean time, the old tried and true way of expressing yourself via letters, email and phone calls should be done.
Can we get our money back?
