So, Mr. Benham, is the cost of this next series of meetings part of the PR budget for the campaign?

1. How do you inform a broad spectrum of the public; how do you educate them as to the issues, alternatives, costs and likely outcomes?

2. How do you determine the will of the public at large? What is a true representation of the preferences of the entire affected population?

These demand somewhat different approaches, though each is somewhat dependent on the other, especially since people need to understand the issue before having an opinion.

Our public institutions have been doing pretty well with the first problem but have had a slapdash approach recently to the second problem. In particular, I hate those surveymonkey devices when used to determine public policy. (They are fine for bloggers who want to discover the favorite flavor of jelly donuts.) Aside from the questions of electronic manipulation, the questions are often not well-constructed or are misleading or do not adequately identify alternatives, and as has been said, the survey takers are self-selected. The same problem of self-selection occurs in public meetings (as identified by #10).

It is ironic, in a town that houses the Institute for Social Research and also that must surely count the largest number of trained planners of any Michigan community, that we have had such poor survey design. This is a well-understood science. Some years ago, I participated in the Detroit Area Study, conducted by Robert Marans of the UM (who also has served on public bodies). I was chosen on a random basis to receive the survey booklet. The makers of the survey had done their demographic homework and sent these booklets to people in many different Detroit-area communities to ask preferences about many quality-of-life issues, including transportation and housing density. The booklet had diagrams that clearly outlined the different alternatives in each question group. They then subjected the answers to statistical analysis.

This type of careful scientifically accurate survey may be beyond the scope of such groups as the AATA, but it should serve as a model. In particular, if survey results are being used to justify such an enormously expensive and consequential decision as this transit plan, they deserve to be subjected to methodological scrutiny.

By the same token, putting up an anonymous online survey will only attract an internet-savvy subset of these same groups of people, plus maybe some people who don’t even live in Michigan anymore, let alone use the service in question or pay local taxes. Many of these surveys can be easily manipulated to accept multiple votes from the same party or are further disseminated by advocate groups to their supporters. (In fact, I would be interested in seeing a list of IP addresses for several recent government surveys to see if they might include multiple entries from the same location–external or even internal.)

So does it make sense to hold dozens of public meetings that will likely only draw different individuals from the same basic groups described above, or would it make more sense to get on the agendas of multiple community groups that meet regularly and try to get a better feel for what the general population really thinks? In Portland, I understand they actually have formalized a city-wide network of neighborhood groups that meet on a regular basis with various city officials–not just when there is a hot topic, but routinely. Even without such a network, why not reach out to schools, retirement homes, civic groups, neighborhood associations, business associations, houses of worship, etc., and get on their regular meeting agendas? Why not include a post card survey in our tax bills or water bills?

I empathize fully with staff who probably feel “damned if they do and damned if they don’t” in regard to getting public input, but I think they need to be a little more creative, assertive, and scientific about their efforts. If not, then they shouldn’t make statements in front of councils and boards purporting widespread public support for something that has only been seen and discussed with a very small, and very interested fraction of the total population.

I went to one of the public mtgs in the last go-round (when the various scenarios were presented), and my observation was that attendees were given a lot of attention and room to participate. It was certainly not a sale job by staff of a certain scenario – most there seemed to not just enthusiastically prefer the “smart growth scenario”, but to provide criticism along the lines of wanting even *more* than that scenario provided.

It’s true that there’s a difference between public engagement and public lecture, and I’ve thought Michael and the rest of the team did a good job in facilitating actual engagement in the meetings I attended.

I would welcome your attendance at one of our meetings and I think you will see for yourself – we really do listen!

It’s not necessary to use all that technology. The old school way is to use a ordinary chalk: [link]

This is called “hypnotizing the chickens.”

No, sorry if it came across that way. My aim was simply to provide one tool the AATA uses for tallying and responding to compliments and complaints. The table for driver complaints (missed passengers and the like) is included in the following pages of performance data extracted from the board packet: [link]. For example for the first three months of 2011, the AATA determined that there were 11 valid complaints of a passenger being missed, 12 valid complaints of careless/unsafe driving and 5 valid complaints of rudeness.