Archive: News

Part of developing a municipal comprehensive plan is learning what your residents want in the forseeable future.  The Village and Town of Lansing are are taking different approaches to updating their plans.  Both are at the point where they need this data before updating their plans.  This week there was heated discussion on both boards about the value of paying for a professional, scientific phone survey.

Town and Village officials have taken different approaches to updating their plans.  Each Village Trustee has been assigned a portion of the Village plan, and was encouraged to solicit villagers to help update those sections.  The Town hired Planner Jonathan Kanter to help develop its plan and lead a Comprehensive Plan Committee that has been meeting since October.  Members include town and village officials and stakeholders from different segments of the town.  The discussion has focussed on questions and issues the committee thinks important for a survey.

The issues include whether residents support or oppose a town center, sewer and hydrofracking.  The committee wants to know what residents like best and least about their community, how they rate public services, and what their opinions of future growth and development are, as well as what they think the Town's spending priorities are.  Village officials have identified traffic, growth and development, public services and youth services as issues they want explored.

Cornell's Survey Research Institute (SRI) Director Yasamin Miller, a Village resident, has been outspoken about the need for a professional survey in her community.  SRI is a professional firm that specializes in scientific surveys for academic, non-profit, corporations, and governments.  Miller ran unsuccessfully last year for a Village Trustee position.  A major piece of her platform was polling residents to give all Village residents a voice in government decisions.  Her interest in the community's comprehensive plan grew from her neighborhood's objection to a proposed affordable housing in the Northeast portion of the Village.  Since the election she has continued to urge Village officials to conduct a scientific survey.

But Village Mayor Donald Hartill was resistant to her suggestion, saying that he was loath to spend too much on a comprehensive plan that would have neglagible tangible impact on the Village.  Republican Town Board members Robert Cree and Ed LaVigne also pushed back against the expense of a professional survey, expressing doubt that the 365 randomly selected citizens proposed by SRI would provide an accurate picture of what townspeople want.

Town officials have been more receptive to the idea of a survey.  SRI reportedly provided the Town with the lowest bid on a survey that would cost about $8,000 for a 30-question survey or $10,000 for a 50-question survey.  The Town Board voted Wednesday on a resolution to allow Supervisor Kathy Miller to spend a maimum of $12,000 on a survey, part of a $20,000 cap allotted for the survey and incidental expenses related to it.

Monday Hartill said the Village is working with the Town on a survey.  Village Trustee John O'Neill attended a Town Board meeting Wednesday at which Town Planner Jonathan Kanter and Comprehensive Plan Committee member Susan Tabrizi addressed Town Board concerns.  They explained that in order to provide checks in the data more than one question addresses each issue the municipality wants addressed.  Some of the questions are also used to determine statistical information such as the age and gender of the respondent.

Tabrizi, a professional political scientist who works on public opinion for a living, explained that national polls sample 1000 to 1500 randomly selected people to get a reading on what the national population thinks with a plus or minus five percent accuracy.  For Lansing's population of 11,000 the sample must be 365.

"That's where I'm struggling," Cree said.  "The expense for the survey is a substantioal amount.  I struggle to follow how 365 people are representative of a majority of the residents in Lansing."

Tabrisi said that research has shown that it is.  She said national polls are based on a sample of between 1,000 and 1,500 randomly selected citizens.  If pollers cannot reach a person on the list, or if that person refuses to be polled, they call more people until the number is reached.

"Survey methodology is based on this idea that is completely focussed on using a smaller subset to make estimates to the population," Tabrisi said.  "Anything over 1500 people for a nation-wide sample is often seen as surpurfluous.  It's a waste of time and a waste of energy.  For a population of 11,000, if you look at the statistical charts you can see that 365 is the number that gets us to that plus or minus five percent points, again, an industry standard."

She noted that caller ask for a specific person when they call because studies show that women are more likely to answer the phone than men.  A female-heavy sampling would skew the results.  She said the number of people polled is calculated by a proven, industry standard formula that has proven to provide accurate results, adding that larger samples would produce the same results but cost more to poll.

Cree said he better understood the methodology and noted that the 50 question price costs less per question, while providing more input.  He said that it is important to get all the data to make the best decisions based on its analysis.  Kantor assured Cree that the Town will own the data, so it will be available for more in-depth analysis later if Town officials deem it necessary.

But LaVigne remained sceptical, giving an empassioned speech on not spending taxpayer money when a volunteer effort would provide what he claimed would be a similar result.  He challenge Tabrisi to volunteer to conduct a survey, but she explained she does not have the resources to do it as an indivual.  She noted that companies like SRI have lists of proven questions on a number of municipal issues, the experts to interpret the data, and said that much of the expense goes to paying for training and wages for callers.

Former Town Councilman Marty Christopher warned the board that the effort and expense of an updated Comprehensive Plan would be worthless unless the plan is followed in the future years.  He cautioned that has not been the case with the current plan that was developed about a decade ago.  Miller agreed.

"The Comprehensive plan will support our land use ordinance," she said.  "It will support rules and regulations that we have.  it's the basis on which you base all your other things.  I agree with Marty -- if you don't enforce it there is no sense in having one.  It is enforced by the people you elect, period.  So if you elect a group of people that say they are not going to worry about that it's not going to be enforced.  I don't think that's what's happening now because everybody (on the current Board) is very concerned about Lansing's future."

The board voted 4-1 to engage SRI to develop and conduct a survey, with LaVigne dissenting.

v9i11