HomeMy WebLinkAboutJP comment on Sweet Pea outreach 10-17-191
Tom Rogers
From:Jerry Pape <jpape@espt.com>
Sent:Thursday, October 17, 2019 5:30 PM
To:Tom Rogers
Subject:Re: Sweet Pea Summary report [REVISED]
[REVISED to correct misstatement of calculation-JP]
Bozeman City Planning,
I expect these comments to be forwarded to the Planning board.
I put relatively little stake in the data presented from
Sweet Pea. In part, because the total number of survey respondents for the Sweet Pea event represents approximately
[four tenths of 1%] of Bozeman‘s population (200/51000). To permit a sample of such insignificance to guide any aspect
of our decision-making in the Growth Policy and with respect to our fiduciary obligation to approximately 51,000 citizens
is both unethical and immoral.
While I understand that we have an obligation, that we must attempt to communicate and connect with the citizens. It
is painfully clear by the nature of these responses that these respondents are not thinking about the critical fiscal
aspects of a town run entirely on property tax.
Nor does it appear that awareness exists in these respondents, at least in the moment, that the critical issues, perhaps
even mission critical to their own livelihoods, are very different than the categories of emphasis presented.
Moreover, the potential for selection bias—when interviewing people who are attending Bozman’s most famous and
largest festival in the parks seems to beg the question.
To give weight to such thin data simply because, like the other outreach meetings in this process—“it’s all we can get” is
unjustifiable. This is not a case of striving for perfection in the face of good enough—it is reasoning from an N of 1—and
such reasoning is perilous.
With Reason,
Jerry Pape
Sent from my iPhone
On Oct 17, 2019, at 1:12 PM, Tom Rogers <TRogers@bozeman.net> wrote:
Dear Board,
Please see the attached summary form the Sweet Pea outreach effort.
2
Tom Rogers | Senior Planner | AICP
City of Bozeman | 20 East Olive St. | P.O. Box 1230 | Bozeman, MT
trogers@bozeman.net | 406.582.2268
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<191011_Bozeman_SweetPea_MentiSummary.pdf>