The president of Envision Greater Fond du Lac says the organization was asked by a group of business leaders to conduct an internal survey to guage community support for the Lakeside Park alternate master plan. Sadie Parafiniuk says at the request of the business group Envision engaged with a professional nationwide polling company to conduct the phone survey last week. “What we wanted to better understand is what the entire city residents feel now, as opposed to maybe how they were feeling in February, or even back to when the Lakeside Park Exploratory committee started in 2014,” Parafiniuk told WFDL news. The survey was conducted following a recent surge in opposition to the plan on social media. The plan calls for a restaurant on the lighthouse peninsula and amphitheater on Oven Island. Parafiniuk says Envision supports the plan. But some of the survey questions, and how the survey was conducted raised concerns. Some residents questioned why the survey automatically cut off if the person who was being called stated they were over age 65? Parafiniuk says the polling company said in order to keep the survey randomized and statistically representative of the community, once a demographic category was satisfied , the call self-terminates. “When the polling company looked at the back-end data they said the 65 and older category had been satisfied pretty early on Tuesday or early Wednesday. I certainly understand that left a bad taste.” Another question asks if residents consider themselves Republican or Democrat? Parafiniuk says the polling company said in order to get the best statistical representation of the community, it’s to break it down into those demographics.” Another question asked how people feel about councilmember Ben Giles, who has been the council leader in favor of the project. Parafiniuk says the polling company recommended a question related to Giles because his name had shown up frequently on social media posts about the topic.
