City Asks Residents About City Plan

Governments that genuinely want to make sure that their citizens are being heard need to find better ways to reach them. Most lawmakers base their opinions on the far ends – the ones that share their opinions louder and more passionately than others.

But most people fall into the middle – not just politically, but also in terms of preferences. For example, someone may be passionately against a new bridge. Someone else may be passionately for it.

Most will be somewhere in the middle, with no strong feelings. But it’s that “most” that will be most affected by the decision, since they represent a significantly larger sect of the population.

In Newton, the city believes in the idea of a “Comprehensive Plan.” The Mayor and the rest of the city government come up with a comprehensive plan for the city, and field thoughts and ideas about that plan at open meetings with the general public. But Newton acknowledges a common problem with those meetings – not many people attend. Indeed, the town of Newton has 15,000 people, and the town hall can only hold a fraction of a percentage of that.

Clearly there are a lot of people missing out on these meetings. So they decided to advertise a survey . This survey was designed to seek out input from those that could not attend the meetings.

If more cities engaged in these types of citizen outreach, it’s likely city and state governments would have far higher satisfaction ratings.

One of the problems, however, was that the way the survey was created and run was filled with minor, but not insignificant flaws: Outreach : Even though the city itself has a small population, outreach is quite difficult. Even in small towns, very few people read the newspaper and even fewer submit their thoughts and opinions to city governments. Reaching enough people to get a relevant sample is difficult.

Advertising Methods : Similarly, without random sampling, reaching a diverse number of people that accurately reflects the city is difficult. A random survey that was sent out to those in the city, or used in combination with random digit dialing could have been more effective. Because the survey was simply placed online without any randomization, there is a strong possibility it either received few responses or could have received fake responses.

Also, at the time of this writing, the survey itself is also down and inaccessible in the methods advertised. Had the city taken it upon itself to run the survey using more traditional best practices and a survey software program like SurveyMethods, they may have been able to gather more responses.

Despite these flaws, more cities should utilize the strategies of Newton, Iowa and try to make sure that they are accurately collecting data on their citizens, because while there are flaws with this type of survey design and implementation, Newton is certainly going to learn more than a city that depends either only on town hall meetings or on nothing at all. But of course, it’s also always a good idea to research and understand proper survey methodology, since the difference could be what helps ensure that you truly understand the public’s desires and beliefs.