Facilities Meeting July 30, 2012

Team EMES will be meeting at the School at 5:30pm.

The Facilities Meetings are the first and third Monday of the month, but due to the amount of work ahead of us we are meeting  on July 30th.

If you will like to volunteer or help please join us!  You do not need to come to meetings to be able to help, so please email us or post a comment if you will like to help.

thanks,

Flor Diaz Smith
Facilities Committee Chair

EMES Fcilities Survey -- Date Extended

The EMES Facilities Committee is seeking input from the community as the work to address the EMES building must continue. Rubin Bennett posted a message on the Front Porch Forum about a recent post-bond survey sent out to all the registered voters of East Montpelier. Few responses have been received to date and so the deadline is being extended to allow more time for voters to provide their input. Rubin's message is included below.

The survey referenced is available as a pdf here EMES Facilities Survey
or an online version can be accessed here

The feedback of all the voters of East Montpelier is needed now so that it can inform the work of the EMES Facilities Committee.  Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey. 
- Arlyn Bruccoli

Hi folks
I'm wearing my Facilities Committee member hat as I write this post. My purpose is, to be completely honest, to plead with you and everyone you know to please, please fill out and return the Facilities Committee questionnaire that we sent out a couple weeks ago.

To date we've received only 66 responses (36 on line at the SurveyMonkey link, and 30 paper responses). We sent out 1024 surveys, one to each registered voter/ household in town (an appalling 6.4% response rate). By way of comparison, we had a voter turnout of 690, or roughly 34% of the (if I remember right) ~2,014 registered voters in town. I'd be happy with 30% of surveys, I'd be delighted with more, because the more we hear, the broader our 'sample set' of responses, and the more accurate our charting of trends in responses will be.

Here's our dilemma: From the (re)start of this process, we have been and continue to be very committed to taking community feedback, and doing everything possible to be open and responsive to all. But we've had a very tough time reaching a large segment of the voters in town.

We heard loud and clear that the community was not convinced that the bond we proposed was the right mix. But the time for your feedback to be heard while we frame our new revision of this project is now. In another month, we will have had to make critical decisions about the scope and direction of this project, and without a *much* broader scope of responses, we will be operating once again on little more than our own intuition. And what we come out with for a new vote in November may well not reflect what you think unless you tell us *right now*.

My intention with this post is singular: We need to hear from a broader swath of community members in order to make informed, responsive decisions about the direction of this project. I know it's summer and you all have other things that are more pressing right now than filling out a survey, but I plead of you to take 15 minutes and let us have it: The good, the bad and the ugly.

We've put copies of the survey at the town offices (there's a collection box there and at the school). There's a PDF available on our blog that can be printed and filled out, and it is online at Surveymonkey (link at the bottom of this post). And we don't need your name, we just want your input - anonymous responses are fine.

I hope that you're all enjoying this gorgeous summer weather, and I thank you all in advance for your time and attention!

Rubin

Surveymonkey link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QZBF5JS
EMES Facilities Blog (and PDF of survey): http://emesfacilities.blogspot.com/