Three weeks ago the Voice asked readers to respond to a survey on their attitudes and opinions relating to a District School Board of Niagara proposal. The DSBN is seeking to acquire a portion of Fenwick's Cherry Ridge Park for use as a soccer field to serve the students at the adjacent public school, currently undergoing expansion.
Our survey's first three questions mirrored the DSBN's own survey, which it sent to nearby residents, as well as to the parents of students attending Wellington Heights school (formerly Pelham Centre). We did this to provide an unofficial benchmark for the DSBN's survey results. If both surveys were conducted in an open manner, and the results honestly reported, then they should correlate to a large degree.
Despite being warned that only Pelham-resident results would be accepted, about two dozen survey takers were from outside Pelham, as determined from the IP addresses associated with the computer or device they used to answer the survey. St. Catharines, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Toronto, Welland, Caledon East, Grimsby, Beamsville, Hamilton, Kitchener, Caistor Centre, and Cambridge were all represented. All of these survey-takers answered that yes, they would like to see a soccer field at Cherry Ridge Park. Not a single non-Pelham respondent answered this way. We conclude that there was an attempt to skew the results in favour of the DSBN's position. Whether this was coordinated, and, if so, by who, we can't know for sure. These non-Pelham answers have been removed from the final results.
This left 42 valid responses. They are presented below.
