The poll Chris OD attempted was clearly jive, but, in the interest of
accurate reporting, I have to agree with Melani on the apparent result.
I was seated in the back of the room by the door with a clear view of the
audience. As much as I love Chris OD and understand why he doesn't want the
added traffic from this hotel a block from his house, I think he saw the
result that he wanted to see rather than the slight edge that went to those
who supported the concept of an 11-story erection at 40th and Pine.
There were a number of people who chose not to vote, and I doubt that they
were all "undecided".
By the time Chris got up to speak, quite a few people had left as the
hammer-TLus portion of the evening got underway.
And the representative from the Committee of 70 left in tears (that last
part was total fabrication, but... you get my drift).
-Lew
Speaking as someone who has taken responsibility to run genuine association
elections, fake elections hold little weight with me. They are
public-opinion toys, nothing more.
My reckoning of that inconsequential moment was that a few more hands were
raised for 'opposed' than were raised for 'supported'. But you could just as
well be right! It doesn't matter at all, because it was not an official vote
officially presented and counted. It was just one speaker's rhetorical ploy.
It did, however, closely match my subjective measure of the "expressed bias"
of the 18 commenters. Two cheesy data sources that independently agree are
stronger than either one alone. My final evaluation was based on that
concurrence of data.
Enough of who won nothing. The real news is these are, on the whole,
tentative responses to a project that is still evolving in response to its
responses.
An anxiety that recurred throughout the SHCA meeting was that people want to
know exactly how far along in the decision-making "process" this particular
event lay. My own reading is that we're somewhere in the early minutes of
the second quarter of the game.
-- Tony West
/
In a message dated 11/13/07 11:38:38 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
/
/Two different measures suggested that those who were
decidedly opposed
to the project slightly outnumbered those who were in favor, but that
undecideds and neutrals were numerous, and many people expressed
complex, ambivalent responses. I did not get the sense that either side
was dominated by ringers who had been marshaled to make a pitch for
their bossman, as has been seen before at some public forums in
University City./
Tony, I believe you'd already left when Chris O'Donnell got up to speak.
Some others had too, of course. At the end of Chris' comments, he called
for a show of hands: who was in favor of the project? A number of hands
went up. Chris started counting, but stopped before finishing and said,
well, how many are opposed?
From my seat at the far edge, near the back, I glanced around quickly. I'd
swear that it was a smaller group of hands raised for "opposed." But Chris
quickly moved on without giving us any counts, and the people with their
hands in the air put them down before anyone else had time to count. And
Chris finished up saying that more study needed to go into the project, or
something like that, and the meeting ended.
- Melani Lamond
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