Is It All In the Wrist?

Last week's Commission meeting was preceded by the receipt of a collection of e-mails.  Barbara Kuhl had formulated an opening statement and four questions, she had passed them along to Steve Bernard, Steve sent them to an unknown circulation, and about 10-15 people's responses were sent to the Commission.  Only one of the responses was sent to Commissioners directly by the respondent, and all the rest were sent by respondents to Barbara, who then sent them to Commissioners.  We have no idea how many people received the questions, whether any information other than the questions and the brief introduction to them was made available to those on the circulation, and whether Barbara received any responses she did not forward to Commissioners.

This is what Barbara/Steve sent their circulation:

Hi Everyone,

As you probably know our Log Cabin is being renovated.  Commission meetings will be held there when it's finished and there have been some discussions about the dais.  Right now it seems like a majority of the Commissioners are in favor of having a fixed, permanent dais.  The cost, according to our Village Manager is $24,000.  

The Village has borrowed $350,000, and will still need another $135,000,  to complete the restoration of the Log Cabin.  Some residents are not in favor of spending $24,000, for a dais.  Some residents would like to have it movable so that the Log Cabin can be used for other purposes.  The dais as proposed will take up approximately half of the Log cabin.  The plans for the Log Cabin and the dais location are attached.

At the last budget meeting Mayor Coviello said that he's heard from residents in favor and opposed to these issues.

We would like to hear from more residents.  

Please tell us:

1.  Do you think it's a good idea to have a permanent, fixed dais? 

2.  Do you think the dais should be redesigned so that it's movable?  

3.  Do you think we should spend $24,000, now to build the dais? 

4.  Do you think we should postpone the expenditure? 

The responses the Commissioners received were more or less unanimous.  They weren't quite unanimous, in that some people did not answer every question, but there was a strong trend among responses.  It seems no one whose response was sent to the Commissioners wanted a fixed dais, everyone wanted a movable dais, everyone thought the cost was too high (outrageously so, it seems), and everyone thought the expenditure should be postponed.  Again, that trend represents all the answers given and forwarded to Commissioners.

I have, in effect, conducted a poll of my own.  It is represented by the blog post just before this one.  I have no idea what the circulation is, except that I directly inform about 75 people of new posts.  Viewership statistics suggest that more than 75 people are aware of blog posts.  In addition, a website called Feedspot picks up this blog, and there is no way for me to know how many people they inform of new posts.

What I know is that the average viewership when there is no new post is about 20 views a day.  The post I published just over 60 hours ago has received about 200 views.  So there have been about 150 views attributable to the presence of the last post.

Of those 150 or 200 people, four have chosen to leave comments thus far.  I do not control comments.  I do not delete any, and I do not adjust any.  You can read the comments for yourself.  Of the four, it seems all of them agree with the fixed dais.  Some are concerned about the cost of the dais, but none rules it out completely.  One seems to consider whether a postponement might be appropriate, in order to save up for the expensive permanent dais.

These kinds of results are more or less opposite to those transmitted by Barbara Kuhl.  The obvious question is why the results are so different.  Could Barbara/Steve be tapping a population of respondents different from those who become aware of blog posts?  Some of their respondents are people who are not on my circulation, but others are on my circulation.  Those who receive notices of new posts from me, and who also received the questions from Barbara/Steve, apparently chose to respond to Barbara/Steve, but not to comment on the blog post.  The post, by the way, requests an opinion, just as did the Barbara Kuhl letter.

As I read Barbara's letter/questions, they seem a bit slanted.  In its way, so is the blog post.  (For example, Barbara says the proposed dais will take up about half of the room.  I say it's about a third.  It looks like about a third to me.  But if it's not precisely a third, it's very clearly not half.  So the "truth" might be somewhere in between.)  But either survey was supposedly open for any response of any persuasion.  Again, we have no way of knowing if Barbara got any responses she did not share with the Commission.  What we also don't know is if there was any other information Barbara shared with her recipients, but she did not include it in the letter attached to the questions.  I raise this possibility, because Barbara was involved in a petition drive a year or so ago, and it turned out that those who were asked to sign the petition were apparently given more information about the issue than was contained in the petition.  This is of course very normal for petition drives.  The problem was that some of the information given, in the petition and in the additional explanation, was wrong.  We don't know if a version of that happened here, too.

But coming back to the two sets of responses about the dais, there is an interesting peculiarity between them.  Barbara made the responses she sent to Commissioners public record.  In addition, one of the respondents explicitly asked that his letter (more than simple answers to the four questions) be read at the Commission meeting last week.  His response was not read, because there was abundant discussion during the meeting, it was decided not to take the time to read all 10-15 of the responses, and they were public record anyway.  But because the response is public record, because this was the one response sent directly by the respondent to the Commissioners, and because the respondent specifically asked that his response be read openly at the meeting, it's worth a closer look.  The respondent was our neighbor, William Pierce.  Funny enough, there is a blog commenter who calls himself William.  I am not in a position to know if "William" is William Pierce, but I do know that William Pierce is on my circulation of people to be notified of new posts.  And how many people named William go by William?

Here's what's interesting about the responses from William Pierce and "William."  William Pierce says he got at least some of his information about this issue by watching a transmission of the 8/11/15 budget workshop.  He had some concerns with the design of the dais, in that he did not want it to be usable for only one purpose.  Mostly, however, he was concerned with the cost.  He felt it was exorbitant and not within the Village's budget, and this was a greater crime if the dais was not (re)movable, so that the room could be adapted for other purposes.  He seemed also a bit concerned that a new, fancy, and imposing dais somehow represented self-aggrandizement on the parts of the particular Commissioners in office now.

"William" who commented in the last blog post was also concerned with the cost of the dais, but he was more gentle and more generous, if even a bit more tentative, in his criticism.  He reiterated his willingness to keep temporary card tables as the Commission/Board surface for another year.  Now, though, he makes reference to some "brain-storming" he has been doing with some of his neighbors.  That brain-storming has led him to understand that even a movable dais is not removable, and moving it confers little or no benefit with respect to his idea to clear the room for other functions.  But with which neighbors did he brain-storm?  In the post, I said a movable dais was only slightly movable, and was not removable, but William didn't talk to me, other than to read the post.  Did he talk to someone else?  He read and made reference to the comments before his.  It seems that whatever he, if it was he, responded to in the Barbara Kuhl letter/questionnaire did not include an understanding that a movable dais is only slightly movable, and not removable.  William was also more willing to consider spending $24.5K than William Pierce had been to spending $24K, and William suggested that maybe a fixed dais would be the better choice, since adapting the dais to make it move would also make it cost more.  "William" is not at all accusatory or insulting to Commissioners, as William Pierce seemed almost to be, and he even suggested ways Commissioners could better engage their neighbors to persuade them to agree to the fixed, expensive dais.

So why did William, assuming he and William Pierce are the same person, change his approach?  Why were Commissioners told only of critics in response to Barbara Kuhl's outreach?  Why did some people who were critical of the dais in response to Barbara's outreach, but who are on the blog circulation, not also criticize here?  Their opinion, even criticism, was requested.

Barbara has a theory about this phenomenon.  She has shared it with me.  Her theory is that people are reluctant to comment in the blog if their comments are not in agreement with the post author (usually me), because they're afraid I or some other author will argue with them, or even insult them in some way.  But some people, even Barbara, do in fact share disagreement in blog comments.  And does the same phenomenon apply regarding Barbara's request for feedback?  Would she bury or confront a response she didn't like?  Or would someone be afraid to disagree with her (and Steve), as she thinks they're afraid to disagree with me?  We don't know.  I came to find out indirectly about Barbara's request for feedback.  For whatever reasons, I am not on Steve's circulation, but someone else sent it to me.  I would have responded in disagreement with Barbara's very clear preference, but since I myself am a Commissioner, I felt it would be inappropriate to reply to a petition.

It's a curious difference between Barbara's and my requests for feedback.


PS: In her introduction to her four questions, Barbara says that David Coviello reportedly heard from residents both in favor of and opposed to the dais.  But Barbara didn't report that she heard from anyone who was in favor of the dais.  What accounts for these discrepancies?