In December 2009, the City of Whitewater announced the results of a “2009 Comprehensive Plan Community Survey.” Whitewater’s City Manager, Kevin Brunner, predictably touted the results as proof of satisfaction with his municipal administration. Around that time, I saw the survey results online, but I’m sorry to say I didn’t comment on the survey or the city manager’s characterization of the results.

One key note: the City of Whitewater created this survey, sent it out, and thereafter turned it over to academics to try sort it all out. Those academics who received these results for review received a mess.

There’s a story, perhaps apocryphal, that comes to mind.

Aides to Franklin Roosevelt asked him if he might consider appointing Herbert Hoover to a commission, as they knew former President Hoover was intelligent (albeit unpopular).

Roosevelt knew that Hoover was highly intelligent, but also knew that Hoover was political poison, the benefits of bipartisanship notwithstanding.

So, Roosevelt replied that he could not appoint Hoover. “Gentlemen,” Roosevelt said, “I’m not Jesus Christ, and I cannot raise the dead.”

Similarly, no matter how skilled an academic, no one could make the city’s method good.

I have embedded that public document, below, and have a few remarks to offer.

A Skewed, Unrepresentative Sample. A survey with a poor sample is representative of nothing except the unrepresentative. The ‘Introduction’ to the study is misleading, as it contends that

This report summarizes residents’ perceptions of the overall quality of life in Whitewater, their evaluation of facilities, services, and safety in Whitewater, and their preferences for future development in Whitewater.

Perhaps, the City of Whitewater’s administration did not suppose that readers could remember words from one page to the next, because only one page later it’s clear that this was not a survey of residents’ views. In the discussion of ‘Sampling Method’ under ‘Methodology’ one learns the true subjects of the survey:

The City of Whitewater Comprehensive Plan Community Survey was designed and administered by City personnel. Questionnaires were mailed at the end of June, 2009, to all property owners and business owners who received water bills. Access to the survey was also made available on the City’s website, and residents who did not receive utility bills could complete the survey by coming to the municipal building, or to the public library and filling one out in person.

Not a representative sample of actual residents, but property and business owners, even if they lived outside in the City of Whitewater. For those not property or business owners, there was a wholly different method of outreach, making the survey data even less reliable. Not a different, secondary collection, but a different primary collection for vast numbers of actual residents.

Needless to say, under a discussion of ‘Demographics’ there’s an acknowledgment of the unrepresentative nature of the survey:

The method for mailing the instrument as well as the timing of the survey completion (mid-Summer), likely affected the demographic profile of respondents. For example, five percent of the survey respondents were between the ages of 18-24, 20 percent were between the ages of 25-44,38 percent were between the ages of 45-64, and 37 percent were age 65 or older. As such, the data are skewed toward a much older age group within the actual population of the City.

So, was this a residents’ survey? No. Was this a community survey? Well, if one is willing to accept an inaccurate representation of the community instead of an accurate one, then I suppose it would be.

Sadly, our current municipal manager would rather tout anything than produce something credible.

Rationalizing the Unrepresentative. Although the City of Whitewater published a sample in a report that acknowledges fatal flaws, there’s still an attempt to rationalize other glaring problems. Consider how the study’s section on ‘Demographics’ describes the ethnic background of respondents:

With respect to race and ethnicity, the data were less skewed and fairly representative when compared with U.S. Census data with 94 percent of the respondents identifying as White/Caucasian and the remaining six percent of the respondents fairly evenly distributed across the other five racial/ethnic response categories.

First, the Census data to which these remarks refer is from 2000, not 2009. The contention that the 2009 survey is ‘less skewed’ depends on stale, 2000 data. There is no one — no one sensible — who believes that in 2009 Whitewater had a population that was 94% white. Candidly, the 2000 Census data were probably over-stating whites, but in 2009, it’s just embarrassing to rely on the 2000 data for accurate demographics on ethnicity. The newer, 2009 survey should have shown a significant difference from 2000, to be in any reasonable way representative of Whitewater’s population.

This is yet another sign of how bad this survey’s sample is.

Second, it’s more than telling that the remaining non-white population (erroneously listed as 6%) is spread across all five non-white population groups. That’s additional proof of how bad the 2009 sample was. The City of Whitewater does not have an equal distribution of non-white ethnic groups, and no one thinks so.

In any event, since people list ethnicity as self-identifiers, perhaps Whitewater’s municipal administration could consider if, in fact, these respondents see no difference between one group of non-whites (the city’s term) and another? One would guess that can’t be true, as people choose a specific ethnicity for all sorts of reasons deeply meaningful to themselves.

Consider an old story about another attempt to make something ill-fitting into something fitting:

Next morning, he [the prince] went with it to the father, and said to him, “No one shall be my wife but she whose foot this golden slipper fits.” Then were the two sisters glad, for they had pretty feet. The eldest went with the shoe into her room and wanted to try it on, and her mother stood by. But she could not get her big toe into it, and the shoe was too small for her. Then her mother gave her a knife and said, “Cut the toe off; when thou art Queen thou wilt have no more need to go on foot.” The maiden cut the toe off, forced the foot into the shoe, swallowed the pain, and went out to the King’s son….Then he looked at her foot and saw how the blood was streaming from it. He turned his horse round and took the false bride home again, and said she was not the true one….

Even a Unrepresentative Sample Shows the Municipal Administration’s Unpopularity. Consider the answers to Table 2, Figure 3’s question, “As you think about the City as a whole compared to five years ago, do you think that things have stayed about the same, improved, or worsened?”

Here are the responses:

Same 24%
Improved 44%
Worsened 16%
Did Not Live in Whitewater [!] 16%

The City of Whitewater touted this as proof of satisfaction with life in town. That’s absurd — fewer than half of the respondents felt life had improved.

That’s not positive — over the years 2004-2009 (coinciding with the tenure of our current administration), one would hope that a significant majority would see conditions positively — as improving.

That’s not what happened — even a skewed sample shows that only a minority of respondents see actual improvement.

These paltry results come despite years of crowing, cheerleading, boosterism, puffery, grandiose claims, and skewed survey data. For it all, still only a minority of feels that conditions have improved in Whitewater.

True Popularity. When Whitewater’s town squires held a meeting for a new school administrator, by their own count about fifty people showed up. When the municipal manager held a meeting in a retirement home about the 2010 budget, only one person — a retiree living in the home — attended.

These efforts produced slight turnout, but it would be false to say that Whitewater’s residents are apathetic. (Although one could have guessed that the city manager — in print — would whine about low attendance at his first budget meeting, as though it could be anyone’s fault but his own. See, Come On, Whitewater! Stop Disappointing Your Politicians and Bureaucrats (Part 2).)

When Whitewater has something worth seeing, people pour out to attend and support the event. For our science fair, there were several hundred, for our Independence Day parade, over a thousand, for graduation, nearly a similar number.

And more important still, in parishes across the city, thousands attend worship each week.

Low attendance only occurs when the same tired bureaucratic class puts on a gathering for itself — then, the seats are mostly empty. A man or woman can see easily through the sophistry of our city’s announcements and declarations. The fault lies not with Whitewater’s residents, but with the bureaucrats who have alienated and condescended to people.

(I have a standing, yet unanswered, challenge to Whitewater’s city manager: where are the crowd shots of the taxpayer-funded Innovation Center’s ground breaking, where are all the pictures of residents turning out in support? I’ve yet to see anything other than pictures of a few fancy people and bureaucrats, standing around and mugging for the camera. I’d guess that I haven’t seen any crowd shots because they’re aren’t any. Outside of a small circle of back-patters, there’s no one who’s eager to turn out for a white-elephant in the making.)

A study like the 2009 Survey, designed and distributed so poorly, and producing such unrepresentative results, should never have been distributed, and never touted as a valid survey of Whitewater, Wisconsin. Any city official who cared about accuracy and proper survey techniques would have done a better job, and would have rejected results like these. The municipal administration’s reliance on these results is unpersuasive.

There’s popular support for many things in Whitewater; one will not find our municipal administration, and its bureaucrats, among those many things.