How heartening it was to see the Politi”fact” people at the Zero take under consideration another questionable poll the City of Portland now uses to justify its latest big dollar unicorn and rainbow utopian plan for Portland: the food scrap recycling program. Their expert found that the poll was tilted toward positive answers. So now the 319 people who responded to the skewed poll will speak for the 583,776 who live and are taxed in Portland. Very tidy.

Even more surprising? That I would be chief among those calling the poll into question and that they’d find me “half true.” Usually the Politi”fact” people find ways to call me a liar but I see from their story that KGW also thought the poll was hinky so apparenlty they couldn’t call all of us liars. Refreshing. Still, the Zero’s staff missed their mark big time.

The City, and specifically Mayor Sam Adams, persist in the claim that 87% of Portlanders are quite satisfied with the food scrap recycling pilot program. Even Barack Obama with the media in the tank for him and the “Si, Se Puede!” and argula crowd cheering him on never had positives that big. But Adams continues to sell the number.

Is the number based on their “poll” of the entire city of Portland? No. The entire 2000 people who took part in the food scrap recycling program? No. No, that 87% number comes from the 19-1/2% of the people who bothered to write the city back. Dang son, we’re in Michael Mann “Hide the Decline” territory!

Instead even the Zero found a pollster from Seattle (no fear of recrimination) who said there were flaws with the poll.

…[W]e had two issues with the survey: the design and the sample.
The design of the poll seemed to tilt the response toward the positive end. (emph mine) You only have three categories “very satisfied,” “somewhat satisfied” and “not satisfied” and the mayor’s office lumps the first two together to mean “satisfied.”
Typically, however, there’s a bracket, said Stuart Elway, a pollster out of Seattle.
“You can get into arguments about how many points there should be in a scale,” Elway said. “Typically you would have a balanced number, so you’d have two positive and two negative.”
We know for certain from the mayor’s survey that 63 percent of the respondents were definitely satisfied. That second category, though, is squishy. Would those folks, if given the option, have cited mild dissatisfaction? No one can be certain.

Here’s something else that the Politi”fact” people at the Zero missed on the survey: half the people had their garbage picked up every week and the other half only twice a month. Then they threw both sets of numbers into the old recycling bin, stirred it up and spit out compost, I mean a “poll.”

I’m no expert but I asked an actual pollster the other day on the air about this jumbling of the numbers. He said you should have a break out stat in the internals to determine if the satisfaction by citizens came from the group of people who had once a week garbage pick up or the ones who had twice a month garbage pick up.

For a bunch of folks who are big on sorting through our garbage and food scraps,  they certainly don’t do much sorting themselves. Which group liked the program more? We’ll never know. But that’s not really the point, is it? The folks at the City had a preordained outcome and they were sticking with it, phony poll or no.

And this poll is hardly a scientific sampling of the populace. If you’re going to saddle the entire city of Portland with changes in their garbage program–one of the core functions of the City–how about a real poll with real poll questions?

Next time you want to dramatically change our lifestyles so you get a better table at the next “sustainability” conference or adjunct lecturer gig at Aspen, start by asking us if we want it. Maybe we can do it voluntarily.
 
Ask us if this is the highest and best use of city funds. Ask us if we want our garbage picked up only twice a month. Ask us. Ask us if we already compost our food scraps. Ask us if we think its worth the money, time and effort to further separate our food scraps, keep them hanging around in the kitchen in a government issued pot on the counter, and then carry the smelly mess out to the government issued barrel for weekly pick up. Ask us. Ask us if 67% recycling rate is good enough and ask us to help you get your vaunted 75% voluntarily (see this post for details).

Let’s be honest. Sam Adams and his “sustainability” acolytes don’t give a darn what the people really think. They chose areas that in all likelihood have friendly political machine groups–Neighborhood Associations–and took a junk poll that they now triumphantly wave around.

I fear that part of the reason the City Commissioners do this stuff is to keep up with the Joneses er San Franciscans.They want that seat at the next “sustainability’ conference so they can beef up their cv. They angle for the adjunct lecturer gig in the summertime in Aspen. They hope that one day Davos will call.

Maybe they’re thinking of a job after city life but must go through green acres to get it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if our leaders thought good and open government were good enough. Wouldn’t it be nice if they considered their budget the fruits of OUR labors and didn’t waste it?