In the discussion and presentations about the community center we are continually shown the image of the DOTS exercise from almost 10 years ago. It is cited as a key early indicator of what is phrased by the Community Center Building Committee as "overwhelming support for locating the community center at the Hartwell site." You are likely to see this image again at the meeting on Wednesday night.
Let's dig into this deeper:
-This was not a vote. This was a polling type exercise -conducted at a state of the town meeting as I recall.
-People were asked to indicate their preference for where to site a community center.. They were given choices for different locations in town- Hartwell area, Pierce House, Bemis, south Lincoln mall area, etc.
-All of the choices were specifically about locating __everything for both Rec and COA__ in one building at the site in question
-NO choices were available that allowed for expressing preference for "Rec at Hartwell but COA might be a combination of Hartwell and other sites."
The above constraint on the choices is a key point in interpreting the results. My belief is that the way the preference poll was framed, the only way that Hartwell would not be the slam dunk winner would be if lots of folks believed rec dept. should be somewhere other than at the Hartwell area. The way you ask the question has a huge effect on the answer that you receive.
-Finally, each person was given 2 dots. They could put their dots on two different choices or they could double down on their first choice.
The results: over 300 dots for Hartwell, almost no dots for any other location. This means that about 150 people out of the voting tax paying population of Lincoln put their dots down for Hartwell.
To claim that this is then a show of "overwhelming support for locating a community center at Hartwell" is grossly overstating what this exercise measured. Such an inference runs counter to anything close to objective scientific method.
A valid interpretation of this exercise is: given the constraint that everything had to be in one place, all together in one building, an overwhelming majority of the people attending that meeting expressed a preference for Hartwell.
We do not know what the results of the Dots poll would have been if other hybrid choices had been made available.
This is a very important distinction, as I believe that the key to solving the puzzle before us is to allow the flexibility to consider the viability and cost of providing some services at Hartwell and some services at other locations. Having everything at Hartwell might end up being the right answer, but I am not convinced of that and need to see a careful objective exploration of a range of variations. Doing that exploration is not an overwhelming task by any means. It involves creating and filing in a matrix that goes service by service and identifies options besides Hartwell where that particular service could plausibly be provided, and then doing the homework to see the cost and feasibility and pros and cons of such a variation.
The long and hard work done by all the committees over the years has not included doing this analysis and I fervently hope we get to a place where that analysis happens.
This is not analysis paralysis.
Dennis Picker
