Second survey shock

A secondary survey being touted by the Nelson Regional Sports Council could be causing confusion in the second phase of the Nelson community recreation campus engagement process, says the Recreation Commission No. 5 chair.

Keith Page said — at a Wednesday morning commission meeting — that the council has added a layer of confusion to the information gathering process now underway between the Regional District of Central Kootenay and the City of Nelson.

When the RDCK manager of recreation and client services, Trisha Davison, was giving an update on the recreation process that began earlier this month, she admitted there was some confusion in the public about the nature of the two surveys.

“I think one of the things we are trying to manage is resident confusion over all kinds of things related to misunderstanding of avenues I didn’t even know existed,” she said, referring to the NRSC survey.

She said people likely won’t know the two surveys aren’t connected, and that if they say something on one survey it doesn’t mean it will be in the other.

NRSC co-chair David McCulloch — who was at the rec. commission meeting — said he was only communicating the wishes of the membership.

“We are looking to ensure that their thoughts and concerns are addressed,” he pointed out.

But Davison said the two surveys are generating confusion.

Again, McCulloch said the NRSC membership asked council to put questions to the public to ensure their thoughts and concerns were being addressed.

“We are going to share that (information) with you, it’s not something we are keeping to ourselves,” he countered. “It might be something you are not doing and there may be questions that you are doing that may be overlapping, but at the end of the day … the community feels they are not being heard.”

McCulloch said there was a concern of trust, there was a concern of engagement that perhaps people are not getting asked the right questions. So that was why the NRSC began a second survey but iterated that they have held off a full launch at the request of Page.

“I’m going to step in here. This is going to be tough, but I don’t think you have held back. The engagement is now,” Page pointed out.

The NRSC survey is generating confusion, he continued.

“If I had management control I would tell you to pull it back, that this is an error,” said Page, noting the dates, meetings and process of the engagement project were clear. “So now we have parallel surveys, and this is exactly the situation I asked to avoid because this has been planned for a more than a couple of months.”

McCulloch said the survey was ready to go in October, but it was held back.

“Our pushback from our membership stated that said we needed to move it forward,” he stated.

“I think we can all see that this creates a problem; that this creates a problem for the collecting of data,” Page said. “We can try and incorporate, potentially, some of the information that you have collected. It may not be successful to the community, I think, and I don’t think the intent there has been captured.

“You want to rush it out? That’s already happened. If the feedback is you can’t hear what we are saying here is a difficulty and a reality, then I think it’s important at this juncture to make clear, this is not an okay situation. This will compromise that we get good data.”

“I believe the intent was to move forward with the best interest of the user groups,” McCulloch defended the merit of the NRSC survey. “I’m sorry that you didn’t see our point.”

“Ditto,” said Page.

A meeting for phase 2 of the engagement process is being held tonight, 6 p.m. at the Prestige Lakeside Resort.