City's 'flawed' process no basis for decisions
Any city with a city council as part of the government structure is fortunate to find capable people willing to devote their time and energy to serve as members. That is certainly true for Fayetteville. However, regardless of the education and experience of council members, they will find occasions where assistance in developing the information needed to make informed decisions is needed. Unfortunately, it is possible that the individuals responsible for assisting council members lack the knowledge necessary to gather reliable information. Or they may inadvertently taint that information by the way it is reported. That appears to be the case with information provided to the Fayetteville City Council concerning single-use disposable bag and polystyrene policy options on Aug. 27.
Fayetteville city administrators used an Internet-based voluntary response survey to gather most of the information provided to the City Council. An individual proficient in statistical sampling knows sample data gathered in that manner should not be relied upon to generalize about the population. Simply put, samples conducted in that fashion are not random. In this case, reasons beyond being non-random cause doubt about the veracity of the information provided to the council.
To begin the analysis, one should ask why someone would make the effort to participate in a sample posted on the Internet. Among statisticians it is generally recognized that people with the strongest interest in the subject are the most likely to participate. Moreover, in this case it was possible for individuals with an interest in the subject to participate in the sampling process an unlimited number of times. In addition, there was no effort to constrain the business part of the sampling to businesses. Furthermore, regardless of their place of residence, anyone with access to the internet could go to the site where the questionnaire was posted and answer the questions.
If the demographic information provided by participants is inspected, it is obvious the respondents were not representative of the city's residents. The ages of the respondents were disproportionately weighted toward individuals between the ages of 30 and 49. As for the educational level of respondents, 69 percent had bachelor's degrees or higher while that number for Fayetteville's residents is 49 percent. Finally, 45 percent of households in Fayetteville have incomes of $50,000 or higher, but that number for respondents was 63 percent.
Apparently, there is also a lack of information among city staff members concerning other geographic areas. The "peer cities" listed in the report provided to the council on Aug. 27 include the states of Maine, Maryland and Vermont. It is hard to visualize those three states as "peer cities" of Fayetteville.
While none of the above is intended to reflect upon what, if any, actions the city of Fayetteville should undertake about single-use disposable bags and polystyrene, it is important to note that policies based on such flawed data collection are not validated. Fayetteville is not San Francisco.
Phillip Taylor
Fayetteville
Commentary on 09/16/2019