April 21, 2004

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Palo Alto Online

The numbers game

by Jocelyn Dong

In the Southgate neighborhood last month, resident Jennifer Hagan and three others polled fellow residents about forming a neighborhood association. Of the 230 households, only 20 percent responded. Just under half favored a new group.

So Hagan is trying again -- this time using an online poll to solicit feedback. But she's not necessarily seeking popular backing to form an association. Hagan plans to start one anyway, possibly by June.

Hagan's effort is just the latest example of how neighborhood leaders walk a fine line between being inclusive and moving forward with plans, and how polls become a necessary evil in that process. Whether dealing with traffic issues or the authority to represent the neighborhood, poll results have been used by association leaders and their critics alike as either support for actions or justification for protests.

In another part of town, Downtown North, the now-infamous traffic-calming trial that pitted neighbor against neighbor also began with a poll. About one out of four households weighed in, with about 60 percent favoring the trial, 17 percent favoring another plan and 23 percent against taking any action.

Although neighborhood leaders said the response rate was as good as could be expected; protesters denounced it as insufficient.

It's admittedly a tough issue, raising both philosophical and practical questions. How many people does it take to form a community? one neighborhood leader recently wondered aloud. And how do leaders rally participation from neighbors who are too busy or apathetic to cast a vote -- or are skeptical of neighborhood associations in general?

Since neighborhood associations take many different forms -- from the ad hoc to the highly organized -- there's no one-size-fits-all answer to the dilemma. Often, many surveys are advisory, seeking only to ferret out which issues concern residents the most.

The idea of achieving an absolute number has been the focal point of some neighborhood debates. In the case of Downtown North, residents who opposed the roadblocks advocated requiring supermajority approval before installing barriers -- that is, 66 percent.

But is that realistic?

"Having 66 percent agree on anything in our diverse world is truly a miracle," said Kathy Durham, president of the College Terrace Residents' Association. In most decisions made by elected bodies, the requirement is 50 percent plus one, she said. Durham, however, did acknowledge that some decisions do require a higher degree of consensus.

Likewise, poll critics point to low participation as reason enough to question the actions of an association. But leaders say neighborhood surveys should be judged on the same footing as other elections. In Santa Clara County last November, for example, voter turnout hovered around a mere 30 percent.

Perhaps the question is not so much how many people vote, but whether everyone had the opportunity to participate, Durham said.

"Most democracies are based on the fact that everyone has the right to participate. If you choose not to -- that's in fact making a choice to let other people make the decision for you," Durham said. "It's the right to participate -- not the right to determine."

Just how far an association should go to invite involvement is another question. If the group notifies each household of a meeting and subsequently takes a vote at that gathering, are those results enough of a basis for action? Or must a group hand-deliver ballots to every home in its jurisdiction?

Practically speaking, hardly any neighborhood association is set up to conduct household-by-household voting, especially larger organizations that encompass more than a thousand homes. The cost of creating ballots and the time it takes to mail or hand deliver them becomes prohibitive for the all-volunteer neighborhood operations, leaders said.

Even notifying people of upcoming meetings and events costs time and money. Doug Moran, head of the Barron Park Association, makes use of e-mail lists and the neighborhood association Web site, www.bpaonline.org , to announce meetings, as well as sandwich-board signs placed throughout the neighborhood.

Up until about five years ago, volunteers did leaflet all 1,600 households in Barron Park, but they've since stopped.

The reason?

"Exhaustion," Moran said, estimating it took 32 hours for a volunteer to walk all the blocks.

The question of gaining approval gets even stickier when, as in the case of Downtown North, the process takes so long there's turnover in the neighborhood. When action finally happens, some residents who weren't around the first time may want to have a say. Meanwhile, those who hashed out the original proposal may be unwilling to reconsider the issue.

"That's a fundamental problem. You can't have issues constantly open (for discussion). There has to be closure at a certain point," Moran said. "It's a judgment issue," requiring enough political savvy to read the environment.

Ironically, Moran got involved in his neighborhood association by protesting an issue that had already been decided. Fortunately, he said, the issue was reopened and the plan was subsequently changed.

Moran sees disagreements over neighborhood issues as stemming partly from a lack of effective communication. Leaders need to explain sometimes-technical issues in ways that are understandable to the average resident. Because processes can extend over months if not years, they must also know when to highlight significant changes in the plan and opportunities for neighbors' input. If they don't, people can wind up thinking that information was withheld for political purposes.

"It's a real art," he said.

As to Hagan's quest to poll Southgate residents, none of the other neighborhood association leaders felt comfortable suggesting an absolute number of either voters or affirmative ballots she'd need. One even thought the question was mostly rhetorical.

Neighborhood associations, "just sort of emerge," said Karen White, leader of the Duveneck/St. Francis Neighborhood Association. "They get together and decide to be more effective working as a group than singly. That's what gives rise to any group."

For her part, Hagan said, "I don't want to create this huge division." In addition to the online poll, she has paper ballots for those residents who don't have Internet access.

She expects the association will probably focus mostly on non-controversial activities to start with, such as disseminating information. After that, she said, the association could take on a life of its own. For more information about the Southgate poll, contact Jennifer Hagan at (650) 328-4422 or JHagan@haganlaw.com. Jocelyn Dong can be reached at jdong@paweekly.com.

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