Representatives of three groups eyeing the future of Wilmette’s lakefront parks, including two that battled during the Wilmette Park District’s unsuccessful lakefront bond referendum request last April, found themselves sitting at the same table Oct. 20, as the park district started crafting a survey on the lakefront’s future.
Park board members hope to get the completed survey out to all district households, roughly 10,000 of them, by mid-November.
By the end of the meeting, group delegates and members of the park board’s lakefront committee managed to provide enough question fodder for researcher Jeff Andreasen to create the survey.
That wasn’t always easy, as park board and committee member Bryan Abbott admitted when members were at a momentary impasse about what to ask in the questionnaire.
“Every time I try to drill down into specific questions, I start to melt down,” Abbott said.
Andreasen, president of Evanston-based aQity Research, repeatedly reminded attendees that they didn’t need to create the actual survey questions. They were there to help him understand what the park board wants to find out about residents’ lakefront views.
“Today, I won’t worry about how to phrase a question,” he said. “Today I want to know what insights are you looking for from the survey.”
Andreasen said that would eventually help him create a mix of open-ended, ranking-format and yes/no questions to find out not only what residents say they want at Gillson and Langdon parks and beaches, but get an idea of why they want those things.
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The meeting was billed by the park board as a chance for delegates from Go Green Wilmette, Save Wilmette Beaches and Wilmette Lakefront Friends to give Andreasen their input and suggestions.
Save Wilmette Beaches, the lobbying group that fought against the referendum request, was represented by its chairman, Tom Scanlan, while the pro-referendum request Wilmette Lakefront Friends sent a member of their steering committee, Joe Dicamillo. The Go Green Wilmette environmental organization’s delegate was its vice-president, Margaret Martin-Heaton,
Scanlan told Andreasen the survey should begin with an acknowledgment by the park district that it lost the referendum request and wanted help in deciding what to do next. He also said many residents have told him they won’t answer the survey because they considered their April vote all they needed to say.
Committee and park board member Stephanie Foster, who was elected as part of the anti-referendum-request effort in April, disagreed, saying, “I’ve heard the same thing, and my response is, ‘It’s disappointing that you wouldn’t give feedback.’ We need to make improvements in the parks, they’re going to have to happen.”
Scanlan and Dicamillo briefly clashed later when Dicamillo stated that turnout for the referendum had been low and Scanlan demurred. Both Abbott and Andreasen urged the two to move away from discussing the referendum.
Andreasen told listeners that the survey’s introduction would be “as neutral as possible.
“We don’t want to use the referendum as a reason as a hook or wall for anyone,” he said. “Now in the survey, we can ask, ‘Did you vote?’ and ‘Why?’ Those would all be perfectly legitimate questions,” but going beyond that might skew responses, and thus results, he said.
Committee members and group delegates did agree on some issues, including the necessity of giving survey-takers an idea of what it might cost to complete various levels of park improvements.
District officials say they must repair and improve aging sewers, roads and lights, have to make Americans with Disabilities Act-mandated improvements to the Lakeview Center. Officials said they also need to replace the deteriorating Gillson beach house. The survey is meant in part to find out what residents might want to see at Gillson and Langdon beyond that.
Andreasen said he could include three different questions asking about respondents’ support for improvements at three different prices. The three options could be included in different survey groups, so that he could judge the level of support for each option, he said.
Before the meeting ended, Dicamillo urged Andreasen to include questions asking district residents whether or not they use the parks, the beaches or neither, and how important they think Gillson and Langdon are to Wilmette’s quality of life
“How do they view the parks’ place in the community?” Dicamillo said. “Those questions need to be asked.”
Martin-Heaton said Go Green Wilmette supported open beachfront development and would welcome questions about that.
Andreasen told lakefront committee head Shelley Shelly he’ll try to have a rough survey outline ready for those at the meeting to review and critique, at least by email, as quickly as possible. He said he would try to complete the survey by the committee’s Nov. 2 meeting, scheduled for 6:30 p.m. at the Mallinckrodt Center.
Once the committee approves the survey, it will go out to residents either as a full printed survey or in the form of an information postcard telling residents where to complete the identical survey online, or where to call to complete it over the telephone. Shelly said she would like it to go out by mid-November so that Andreasen can get responses, analyze them and report to the board in January.
Twitter: @pioneer_kathy