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https://n2v.paloaltoonline.com/square/print/2020/05/21/button-button--whos-got-the-button

Town Square

Button, Button – Who’s Got the Button?

Original post made by Maurice Green, Barron Park, on May 21, 2020

In an effort to help the council set budget priorities, the City of Palo Alto published a survey asking which areas of city services were most important to the residents. Each respondent was given 10 ‘buttons’ to assign to 6 categories. Of the 1404 people who visited the site, 994 people answered the questions, but only 388 “registered” responses (provided address) were counted. Web Link

As Disraeli said, “There are three kinds of lies; lies, damn lies and statistics.”

Even so, “Public Safety” received 25% of the buttons and “Neighborhood, Community and Library Services” received 22%. “Administrative and Government Services” only earned 5.5%. It was clear that residents did not give priority to large infrastructure projects and bloated staff salaries.

These results were amplified by the results of a comprehensive survey published by Council member Lydia Kou asking questions on specific areas of services. With over 640 responses, residents voted 4:1 against cuts in fire and police services, but 13:1 to cut consultants and 10:1 to cut staff salaries. They voted 4:1 to maintain rigorous planning department design review and code enforcement. And they voted as high as 4:1 against every infrastructure project except the animal shelter. You can see all the results and vote at http://lydiakou.com.

So why are staff and the majority of City Council not listening to the residents?


Comments

Posted by Resident
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on May 21, 2020 at 7:34 am

Why did they take survey responses from those who did not register their address. I can't remember the exact wording, but I thought that was optional. Optional but not counted, obviously.

This is from memory so I could be wrong.

I took part. I did not like the wording because it lumped together too many items I would have liked to reply on separately.

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