Form-Based Code Workshop – August 16, 2022
On August 16, 2022, Delo Freitas of Arcata’s Community Development Department presented a presented a workshop (via Zoom) on Form-Based Code. The main speaker was Ben Noble, the City’s Gateway Form-Based Code consultant. This was Ben’s 2nd presentation on Form-Based Code. In the presentation was an emphasis on building height and massing.
The first presentation, from June 29, 2022 can be seen in full with a complete transcription, along with a table of contents, opinions, and the follow-up question and answer session, on this website here.
To skip directly to the video of the August 16 workshop, click here.
Slido surveys are not trustworthy:
As part of the workshop aspects of this presentation, there were polls of the people present on Zoom, done using the Slido app. I have spoken at meetings many times on how the use of Slido as a way of conducting surveys cannot be accepted as being in any way accurate or representative. It is simply too easy to “game” the system in order to distort the actual input.
There was talk of having the survey be open to people who were not able to be at the live meeting, but that did not happen.
The results of the Slido polls can be seen here.
Here is one example of how the listed results are severely unusable (i.e. worthless).
For the question “Is there anything you think is missing from the list that you believe should be considered a top priority?” the input of “Expanded public transit” came in at the top of the list with 25 “votes” and “Home ownership” came in at the second position with 22 “votes.” (At this point, the app was showing that there were 48 or 50 participants. But in reality the notion of “Home ownership” had input as another to topic — with 15 votes. And “Home ownership!” had 10, and “Ownership opportunities” had 12, “Homeownership opportunities” had 10 votes, “Being able to buy a home” had 9 votes, and so on. All in all, there were 16 topics either specifically on Home Ownership or on topics that involve home ownership, with a total of 148 votes.
For more on this, see the article “Arcata speaks: Home Ownership is of supreme importance” on this website here.
Building height results were also not trustworthy
As such, I do not regard the responses to Building Height being valid. Showing 75% of the participants wanting maximum height in each of the Gateway areas is, to me very suspicious — particularly when the same question at the January 21-22 Open House meeting yielded a response of 62 in favor of four stories, versus just 2 in favor of eight stories.