GIGO

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.