Lies, damned lies and statistics

While the originator’s attribution is uncertain, the following phrase, popularized by Mark Twain, seems particularly appropriate relative to the survey results recently presented to our City Council by HCSS (Healdsburg Citizens for Sustainable Solutions) on March 17 and April 7. To quote Mr. Twain, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”
Survey methods such as mailed/online questionnaires or phone/personal interviews all produce different levels of accuracy depending upon the degree of commonly occurring distortions and biases in the survey method and the survey questions themselves. Whether a small sample survey response is representative of the opinions of the larger, target population is debatable based upon how that larger population is defined, the relative response size and the possible distortions and biases already noted.
For public opinion surveys, the target population is usually defined as all registered voters in the surveyed community. The County Registrar’s office reports that total as 5,964 for Healdsburg. At their May 17 presentation, HCSS reported a combined postcard/online survey response total of 260. This is only 4+% of the target population. At their April 7 presentation, they reported a combined total of 400; still low at 7 percent. Assuming no survey distortion or bias, a more representative response size would be 25 percent or higher. For reasons unknown, HCSS elected to provide our city with only 218 copies of the claimed 400 responses. Furthermore, even though each household may have two or more registered voters, only a single survey postcard was mailed to each of 3,400 Healdsburg households.
Clearly, the survey methodology is very questionable at best.
That said; let’s move on to the broader question of how our city has historically managed development and growth.
Over the years, we’ve had many City Councils and Planning Commissions. Collectively, they have successfully managed our city’s development and growth. The fact that Healdsburg is rated high in national lists of the top 10 small towns (both to visit and to live) is a testament to that success.
HCSS is suggesting that we change our time-proven, common-sense growth management processes and instead, legislate a one-size-fits-all ordinance or set of ordinances to limit future growth.
In my view, you cannot legislate common sense.
At the April 7 Council meeting, I urged our City Council to stay the course and to continue the successfully demonstrated review processes used by our Planning Commission and City Council in managing Healdsburg’s growth.
Mel Amato is a Healdsburg resident.