Fairfax
County is in the midst of trying to figure out how to pile more taxpayers into
already well-populated areas while protecting the space of the wealthy in places
that have a density of about three people per acre. Toward that end, there are
a lot of initiatives aimed at handing over my community to developers to turn
it into another Ballston: basically, a faux city with over-priced high-rises
unencumbered by things like improved roads, schools or other amenities that go
along with real cities.
They
try to obscure this, of course, which was the point of a recent survey pushed
out on social media.
This
survey pretends to ask residents what our priorities are, but that there’s no
intent of paying attention to our responses was clear because it served up
multiple screens without any explanation of what the individual choices were. (Also—the
fact that people only know about the survey if they have Internet access and
are on a neighborhood social media site is telling.) Either we’re already
supposed to know every potential road project across a county that covers 406
square miles, or we’re meant to give it up as a bad job.
It
was also clear to me that they didn’t bother having anyone even remotely versed
in survey design (or, even, logic, tbh). I often test surveys to see how
tightly they’re controlled to not return useless data, and when I messed with
some of the answers, here’s what I got by way of an error message. Which did
not comport with the instructions on how to respond to the choices on each
screen.
Like
I said: just political theatre. As with developing the hell out of the People’s
Republic of Reston, the Board of Supervisors is going to do whatever makes
their big donors happiest.
2 comments:
The Great Falls Homeowners Association (or something with a similar title) swings the Big Cat in Ffx Cty. It's where No-Tax Messiah Grover Norquist lives.
Yeah, Great Falls was my target. Slap a couple of high-rise condos out there, and get all the tax revenue you like. But we won't see that, will we?
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