The
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Citizen
Huron County’s most trusted independent news source
Friday, December 15, 2023
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Volume 39 No. 50
Publications Mail Agreement No. 40050141 Return Undeliverable Items to North Huron Publishing Company Inc., P.O. Box 429, BLYTH, ON N0M 1H0
Crusaders win silver By Shawn Loughlin The Citizen
Here, take a handful Jenna McDonald of the Fire Department of North Huron was among the many people in the Blyth Santa Claus parade who patrolled the sidewalks in an effort to hand out as much candy and treats as they could on
Saturday. The tremendous parade was welcomed by hundreds who lined the village’s main street on what was an overcast, but lovely day. Check out page 16 to see more pictures from the parade. (John Stephenson photo)
Last weekend, the U13 LL Blyth Brussels Crusaders returned from Wellesley and the Twin Centre Stars Richard Vollmer Memorial Tournament with silver medals around their necks after a stellar weekend of play. The team opened play with a 7-1 loss to the host Twin Centre Stars on Dec. 8, but bounced back the next morning with an 8-2 win over the Burford Coyotes, followed by a 3-0 shutout win over the Twin Centre Stars, punching the Crusaders’ ticket to Sunday play. On Monday night, the U15 Rep team was in Shallow Lake to play the Lakers, but lost by a score of 30. On Sunday, Dec. 10, the Crusaders beat the New Hamburg Huskies 2 team by a score of 3-2 and then met the Central Perth Predators in the finals, but fell by a score of 2-1. On Dec. 10, the U11 LL team lost to the Mid-Huron Huskies team in Blyth by a score of 7-0, while the U21 team travelled to Arthur and lost to the Vipers by a score of 8-0, the U11 Rep team beat the Mitchell Meteors D team in Blyth by a score of 3-2 and the U18 Rep team lost to the Goderich Sailors on the road by a score of 3-2. Also on that day, the U8 Burgundy team hosted the Wingham Ironmen and the U9 LL team played the Goderich Sailors Continued on page 7
Huron East Council turns down FlashVote proposal By Shawn Loughlin The Citizen Despite an impassioned pitch from Cassidy Svetek of FlashVote, Huron East Council has opted to keep things status quo in regards to the municipality’s engagement with its residents. Svetek spoke to council at its Dec. 5 meeting, relaying all that FlashVote could do to help the municipality take the temperature of its residents on topics both big and small. Her presentation was followed by a recommendation from Chief Administrative Officer Brad McRoberts to consider a three-year contract with FlashVote at an annual cost of $10,000 as part of 2024 budget deliberations. In his report to council, McRoberts said the $10,000 per year would buy Huron East six formal, scientifically-significant surveys per year, meaning a persurvey cost of under $1,700. He also noted that the company
charges a one-time implementation fee of $4,000 that would be waived if the municipality were to commit to three years with FlashVote. Speaking to council, Svetek asked members which percentage of public input matches public sentiment. Mayor Bernie MacLellan opined that he felt it was likely quite low and Svetek told him he was right - indicating that about five per cent of public input is the same as public sentiment. In stark contrast, she said, about 70 per cent of public input is actually the opposite of public sentiment, meaning that, by going against public input, a council such as that of Huron East would be well served to do the opposite of public input, according to those figures. She then used a trio of bar graphs to show how FlashVote achieves a more accurate reflection of the community conducted as a case student with Boston’s Harvard University. Using the example of asking the
public about amenities that are important to them in a new community centre, she showed the first figures, obtained at a public meeting. She said a public meeting would attract, generally, older participants and those who are already invested in the subject at hand. The results showed the top two factors being health and social services and meeting and event space. A second graph showed a social media poll on the same topic that, largely, reflected the in-person meeting responses, though the demographic was slightly younger as a result of reaching out by way of social media. In the FlashVote results, Svetek showed that support for health and social services and meeting and event space dropped significantly, while support for sports nearly doubled. She then discussed why public input, in the traditional sense of the word, is a bad representation of the
public. In the traditional forum of public feedback, Svetek said, those inclined to speak up are the ones on the extreme ends of a topic in which they’re heavily invested, showing a bell curve with the silent majority in the middle. As a result, depending on the inclination of a municipal council, a business, etc., it would be easy to think that everyone is against a project or that everyone is tremendously supportive of it. In the example she used, rating the quality of a community’s parks, the reality from FlashVote was that over 75 per cent of people rated the area’s parks at either four of five stars out of five with a further 16.5 per cent rating them at a three out of five. In fact, just 0.3 per cent rated them at one out of five and 2.4 per cent rated them at two out of five. “Now you can hear from the many, not just the noisy and angry,” Svetek said in her report to council. She also lauded the response time, saying that data can be
collected, broken down and returned to the municipality within 48 hours, meaning that timesensitive decisions requiring public input can be turned around within two days. The results could also be filtered in a number of ways to see responses broken down by gender, age, location, living situation and more. In a community like Huron East, with about 10,000 residents in a number of diverse communities, she said FlashVote would work to recruit a eclectic group of between 200 and 400 people who would commit to take FlashVote surveys once a month, regardless of the topic, achieving an accurate crosssection of the community and its opinions, regardless of what’s being discussed and how controversial it might be. Councillors were concerned with the proposal, however, for a number of reasons ranging from building trust for such a platform and the Continued on page 6