Monday, June 19, 2006

Closing one poll, opening another

I'm starting the week of blogging by closing the current poll and opening a new one.

Out with the old...
I'm impressed with the number of people who voted in this poll. The question was "Which GF dog park proposal do you support?" and we had 50 unique voters cast their votes. Click here for the results. Remember that this poll is unscientific, but it is set up so each voter can only vote once. It does provide a snapshot of sentiments of a group of people interested in the matter.

I was very interested to see the low level of support for the current proposed locations for the dog park. Only 8% voted for the fenceless downtown location and 20% voted for the fenced Lion's Park location (or whatever the Park District wants us to call it). That means that only 28% of the voters favored one of the current proposals...less than a third of all voters.

People seem to generally be ok with the idea of a dog park in the city, but they don't seem overly thrilled with the current proposals on the drawing board. 12% voted for another fenceless location and 30% voted for another fenced location. That's 42% of the voters who like the idea of a dog park, but don't like the current locations being proposed.

If we look at the fencing component of a dog park, 20% of voters wanted a fenceless location and 50% wanted a fenced location. Most voters (including me) seem to see fencing as a must for any dog park in Grand Forks.

Finally, 28% of the voters simply did not want a dog park in the city limits and 2% voted "Other". I'm not sure what "other" proposal that voter was thinking of, but I would be interested to find out.

This was an interesting poll and I found it to be quite telling. When it comes right down to it, people seem to want a dog park in the city (although nearly 1/3 don't want one at all), but the dog park must be fenced and neither of the two current proposals seem very popular. I agree with these results. I think a dog park is ok, but I want to see a new location and fencing isn't even a question any more.

For some of my thoughts on the dog park and reader's comments, see the following posts:
New poll: dog park
How to fund a brand new dog park and not destroy Lions Park in the process
Newsbits: Canad rising, dog park dilemma
Dog park petition

In with the new...
The new question is "Would you like to see a Wal-Mart on Gateway Drive?". I will be interested to see what everyone thinks about the possibility of Wal-Mart opening a store on Gateway. This comes from my post entitled "Gateway cleanup" and some of the comments from that post. Happy voting!

1 comment:

GrandForksGuy said...

What...isn't anybody gonna talk about the dog park? What do you all think of the results?

Fencing certainly seems to be a must, huh?

I think we can safely say that the downtown location is history...