Mark Twain is reported to have noted that there are “lies, damn lies, and statistics.”  Last week the City announced the results of its latest collection of statistics: A survey of 566 residents on a variety of topics concerning life in Park Ridge.

Frankly, we have never put much stock in these government-sponsored surveys.  Often the questions are slanted and lend themselves to a particular answer, and their results are only as good as the level of knowledge possessed by the respondents – which is a decidedly mixed bag on even the best of days, and on the bad days is little more than garbage in, garbage out.

So we looked at the results – which are available on the City’s website – with more than a little trepidation but with plenty of humor.  And we were not disappointed.

Some questions (and their answers) were obvious throw-aways – such as the rating of “job opportunities” (33% avg, 31% “poor”) or access to “affordable quality housing” (29% avg., 40% “poor”) for an upper-middle class, racially homogenous bedroom suburb.  D’uh.

Some were obvious feel-goods for the politicians and the bureaucrats – such as the vague/nebulous “I am pleased with the overall direction that the City of Park Ridge is taking.” The results (60% avg., 18% “strongly agree,” 40% “somewhat agree”) can be trumpeted by politicians and bureaucrats as an endorsement of their policies and performance even though there appear to have been no benchmarks – none, zero, zip, nada – for the respondents to gauge their responses and, therefore, for any analysis of the results.  

And how does the response to that feel-good question jibe with the responses to the more direct questions like “I receive good value for the City of Park Ridge taxes I pay” (which only pulled a 55% avg, with 32% disagreeing) , or with 53% of the respondents saying that taxes are a “major problem” in Park Ridge? 

Another seeming disconnect is the fact that four times the number of respondents viewed “population growth” as being “too fast” versus the number who thought it “too slow” (16% v. 4%), which dovetails nicely with the report that six times the number of respondents viewed “retail growth” as being “too slow” versus the number who thought it was “too fast” (47% v. 8%).  In other words: Too much residential, not enough retail.  And that’s even before you consider that more respondents think our “land use, planning and zoning” is fair-to-poor than think it is excellent-to-good (54% to 46%).

How do you think the more-is-more condo developers are going to dance around that one?

We’re sure that these results will provide a wealth of entertainment over the next several months, and we look forward to contributing our share to the festivities.  Meanwhile, we do want to leave you with one very positive result: 84% of the respondents voted in the last election, and a whopping 96% said that they plan to vote in the next one. 

This being a “Park Ridge” survey, we’re hoping they were referring to our local elections.