Jeannie – the ULI competition was a great experience and a tremendous opportunity to put forth our best efforts and ideas tackling a complicated infill and TOD development problem. More than anything I learned what is possible when you have a great team. Given the fungibility of money, I guess you could say the prize money helped fund my career – I launched my consulting practice in OKC at the beginning of this year.

Thank you Blair

I agree 99.9% with your Conclusion (am sure there is something I could disagree with…LOL). Especially when you wrote: “Not only should we ask questions, but we should expect our leaders to answer the questions and answer them directly. If an idea cannot stand up to legitimate questioning, then it is an idea unworthy of our consideration.”

Unfortunately that was not my experience when I did precisely that concerning the Ford/NBA tax vote.

Peace

http://www.okc.gov/maps3/ideas.html

Unfortunately their footnote info at the bottom doesn’t tie back to the info above it (have to make the connections for yourself)

As far as why 12 out of 14 instead of some other numbers, probably it took them until they got to the 14th one before all of their priorities were included (just happened that 2 others sneaked in).

I agree with Jill that it is a small sampling of people… less than 3,000 in a City of half a million, over a period of 4 months (3 years ago now, would their response be the same now as then?). That’s presuming that every respondent was a citizen of OKC (they got responses from all 50 states and several foreign countries). Yet this is the same survey that the Mayor used as overwhelming support for going ahead with a MAPS 3 (the 85% figure).

I also agree when she wrote: “can we even assume that a few hundred people filling out a poll are speaking for the citizens as a whole?” (Actually it was a few thousand)

But other than a higher sample size (but still a small minority of the population), how is that much different than saying “the majority of the people/community/entire City supported the Ford tax improvements” (statements like this were made by City leaders after the vote passed), when roughly 30% of the registered voters (15% of OKC residents) expressed their position? Simple fix for that is to say “The majority of the people who voted…”

Great job, Steve, opening your blog up to different folks. Did you influence the Daily Oklahoman’s decision to run the AP story about Generation X’s summer of losses of icons? You rock!