Comments On A Deeply Flawed Community Survey Process

Contributed by Jeff Fahrenwald

I was one of the members of the Rockford Park District Operations Advisory Committee that had input into the in-depth study of RPD. At the time, I thought there was a thorough process for gaining community input and for coming up with the priorities for the District.  After recently reviewing the process, which you can find the details of on the RPD Foundation website – I now believe our process was flawed and those flaws end up reflecting in the recommendations being considered by the Park District Commissioners.

I am not a skater, I don’t have an emotional attachment to our rinks or skating.  I do however understand the economic impact of over 500,000 visitors a year to our ice facilities and I DO care deeply about how we behave as a community as we go about making decisions and the processes we use to make those decisions.  I upon, reflection I am not comfortable with the process that has brought us to today.  Let me explain.

These are facts about the Community Engagement Survey process.  There were 2937 surveys completed.  This is an impressive number, but if you look a little deeper there are some troubling facts – There were over 100+ outreach opportunities – of the 70 listed, NONE were at an ice facility or with the skating community. There were 7 community engagement sessions, none at an ice facility. There were 17 locations feedback on chalk boards – none at an ice facility. And, there were two focused outreach groups (golf and swimming) that had three in-depth meetings. Yet, as I mentioned before, there are well over 500,000 visits per year to our ice facilities - and the majority of these visits are from our community members. This group was not actively asked to engage in the study.

I didn’t see it at the time, but I see it now.  There was a flaw in the process that ended up not fully including an important group of our own citizens and therefore the conclusions of the survey process could be skewed: results which partially led to the recommendation before the board.  If the Park District is truly interested in engagement and transparency, then this research flaw needs to be fixed.

I should note the final RPD report did include on page 46 of 52 pages a one-page mention of Ice Feasibility Study. This study actually took place in late 2017 and was focused on the feasibility of adding an additional sheet of ice in Rockford.  There was a focus group of skaters held in October of ’17 that asked for input (The Park District Community Research work took place from March through June of ’18 and its approach was much different).  At the bottom of that page it says, “The Park District will work with our skating community as we go through our evaluation process.”  To my knowledge this did not happen.  

Those that frequent our ice facilities should have been AND need to be fully engaged before any recommendation or decision is made.  That was done with golf, it was done with aquatics and it should have been done completely and transparently with the skate community.