PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Allegheny County economic survey
by Maggie Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2004 at 3:25 PM
sleeper2004msg@yahoo.com

Economic development; Allegheny County; survey; citizen participation

http://www.county.allegheny.pa.us/economic/survey04/

The URL above is where to go to take a simple (one page) survey on where Allegheny County should direct its resources for economic development. I strongly advise everyone to take the survey. It is a quick and relatively easy way to have some input into county government.

Even if the results are ignored by county officials, it is difficult for those officials to ignore participation by a large number of people. If for no other reason than sheer numbers, I encourage everyone to take this survey.

The survey has several problems, some big enough to fit within potholes on area roadways. Heck, some big enough to put sidewalks alongside area roadways, provide public transportation to traverse those roadways, and help provide jobs to encourage people to use the public transporation and sidewalks. (Okay, maybe I exaggerate.) The simplicity of optional responses to the question on infrastructure can be read either as suspicion of county officials who plan to use resources for whatever they want regardless of survey results, or it can be read as evidence of limited analysis by county officials.

As a veteran of many cities' planning processes, and as a person whose responses to citizen-participation sections of those processes end up in highly-respected newspapers and officials reports to city officials, I strongly encourage everyone to take this survey.

There are some good questions on the survey, too, including one about combining services of various local-level governments. Moreover, there are several opportunities to add extra comments, including items that never were mentioned on the survey.

Once again, even though this is the hot, tired, panting dog days of summer, I strongly encourage everyone to take this survey. Once again, the URL for the survey's webpage is:

http://www.county.allegheny.pa.us/economic/survey04/

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