If a lawsuit and a second petition drive against Michael Maltzan's "Lens" were not enough proof that St. Pete does not like the design slated to replace the St. Petersburg Pier, a new poll also shows minimal public support.
According to the latest results from StPetePolls, only 30 percent of the 1,916 survey respondents think the "Lens" pier should be built. More than 55 percent do not think it should be built while 14 percent are unsure.
On Dec. 6, city council voted 7-1 to approve the next phase of funding for the design. While it approved the design, council did put in road blocks for future funding sources so each step will have to be passed by council in increments.
Council did this in case 'Stop the Lens' is successful in its petition drive, so it could halt the "Lens" construction process.
According to StPetePolls, there is something else the public wishes to halt — red light cameras. Nearly 54 percent respondents told StPetePolls that they do not think it was a good thing for the city to install the cameras.
Thursday, council will hear an official report on the first year results of the red light camera program. City staff, despite overall crashes being up at intersections with red light cameras, is recommending nine additional red light cameras in St. Pete.
StPetePolls conducted its scientific survey on Dec. 17 among registered voters within St. Petersburg.
Other results from the December 17 survey from St. Pete Polls include:
- 45.5 percent of respondents think city council is doing a good job while 55.5 percent do not.
- 54.3 percent approve of Mayor Bill Foster compared to 45.7 who do not
- St. Pete is unsure on the local hiring ordinance with only 29 percent for, 23 percent against and 47 percent unsure.
Finally, in a hypothetical race for mayor between Foster, Kathleen Ford, Rick Kriseman and Scott Wagman, Foster holds a sizeable advantage with 31.8 percent support. The next closed candidate was Ford with 18.1 percent support. Those undecided are the largest number for the St. Pete mayoral race at 35.6 percent.
Most people, when presented with the options for the Pier, including the costs, understand that keeping the existing structure is not a viable course of action. It's time to move forward.
The results for the Lens pier question are pretty consistent with the last several polls we have done on this subject. And as for our accuracy, we did very well predicting the November election results last month, with all of our last round of polling results being within the margin of error of the final official election results. Our polling methodologies work, and are accurate.
As for our client-paid polls, we don't release them under our name. If the client wants to release them they can, but we don't. Also, we have conducted several client-paid polls in the weeks leading up to the last election that clients were not very happy with the results. But our job is to be as accurate as possible, not to tell a client what they want to hear. I do appreciate the question suggestion, and we can put a similar question in the next St Pete Poll we do the first week in February. From the most recent numbers that I have seen, the subsidy reduction would be from $700,000 to $800,000, instead of a million. So we would phrase a question something like this: "Would you support replacing the existing pier if the result was a reduction in the operating subsidy of up to $800,000 per year?" That question of course does not specify the Lens pier as the replacement though, would you think it should or not?
"Would you support replacing the existing pier if this action resulted in a $800,000 yearly reduction in taxpayer subsidies?"
"Do you support the new scaled-back plans to build a new police headquarters?" As for localized support for the Lens pier, we did analyze results by zipcode, and there were still more people in 33701 who do not support the Lens pier than there are people that support the Lens: 33701 results only, do you think that the Lens pier should be built? (151 responses) Yes: 38.4% (58) No: 53.6% (81) Unsure: 7.9% (12)
How do they know it will be less if they don't know what it will be? lmao...they also say they need less parking because they expect less visitation...wat? A refurbished pier would have less of a subsidy as well since much of the subsidy is maintaining the approach. A new approach would have much less maintenance. Lisa Wannemacher, in her presentations, compares the circa 1926 piling configuration(what we have now) to the proposed lens piling configuration, saying that the lens would have less maintenance costs. This is totally insulting to our intelligence, and is completely disingenuous, as a new approach would have less pilings than the current layout by a long shot. To compare the lens pilings to ones installed close together in 1926 is total bunk,
http://www.stpete.org/history.asp