Polling for a Pool: Public Involvement Leveraging GIS
by Jason Boucher, GISP
Background
Jason presented an interactive session exploring the public involvement processes for community facilities at the GEOPASS Conference in Laramie, Wyoming in the Fall of 2022. Focusing on pools and community aquatic facilities this presentation explored quality of life and how public involvement around specific projects allows for broader discussions of community values. Several case studies were highlighted, from web-based tools and survey methods to traditional public meetings tailored for rural communities. Successfully engaging youth was another element of this presentation. ESRI’s Survey123, Story Maps, ArcGIS Online, and ArcGIS HUB deployments were explored along with other online survey applications, surveying alternatives, and more traditional methods of information gathering.
This presentation has been turned into an article for Western Planners e-journal publication.
Why public involvement?
Other than a legislative due process, public involvement is the medium through which we gather information from the community on any given civic project. From opinion to strong resolve, feedback from the public drives better decisions and facilitates a common direction in an informed and collaborative manner. Often public input can become just a box to check but should in fact be regarded as vitally necessary to facilitate any practical solution’s long-term success. It is especially necessary when it comes to the planning process of any public facility and it’s programming. Besides informing decision makers it helps to build public ownership and support. When it comes to funding a project, stakeholder buy-in is crucial.
As a consultant working on behalf of a client it is important to “level set” with the client on roles and responsibilities as well as approach. A strong communications plan to keep everyone informed will go far in preventing any un-authorized actions, disingenuous communications, or unsanctioned events.
Pre-Game Feasibility Considerations
Aquatic facilities come in all shapes and sizes and whether it’s an existing facility getting an upgrade or a new one is breaking ground feasibility considerations are the foundation of project success. The goal is always to determine the type of aquatic facility that will best meet the communities needs all while balancing current trends with wish lists and budget constraints. You want your project to remain reasonably justifiable while giving fair considerations to all the stakeholders. This means understanding the community, which in turn means knowing them and allowing them to have a voice. Any group using or interested in using should be consulted. The local swim team, the swim coaches, or any aquatic activity class leaders or attendees all would have important feedback for consideration. A look at the area’s population, demographics, and income statistics can help facilitate larger conversations around use types and constraints. Note that catering to one specific group changes the facility’s dynamic and on a spectrum between fun and fitness revenue potentials tend to decrease as you move toward a more fitness focused facility. When it comes to the various options in aquatics recreation the opportunities are boundless, therefore a good handle on a project scope from the feasibility standpoint is important in narrowing the expanse of choices.
Outdoor Aquatic Options
Swimming pools are still a staple for most communities and lend themselves to a great many modifications and configurations that allow for multiple uses and purposes. Swimming pools can be built specifically for recreation or competition but can be a hybrid of the two as well. Pools can include splash decks, activity pads, lazy rivers, and receive traffic from waterslides too.
Typically, a swimming pools activities are grouped by a swimmer’s abilities due to water depth. Lifeguard staffing for most municipal pools range from 4-6 lifeguards per shift. Operation and maintenance costs are higher in-part due to this staffing need but are also increased by energy costs needed to heat water as well as the treatment and filtration.
Splash deck activities should be grouped by age appropriateness. Lifeguarding needs are lower than swimming pools and usually 1-2 are all that are needed per shift. There is also no standing water on the facility which presents a much safer environment for small children. Splash decks use a smaller volume of water, don’t requiring heatingand have more simpler filtration systems. Naturally then, operation and maintenance costs are lower than a swimming pools.
If a swimming pool and splash deck were incorporated together the activities would still get grouped by age appropriateness and ability and the lifeguard staffing needs would remain at 4-6 per shift.
Because of this concept we often see communities choosing to rehabilitate there existing stand-alone pools into more of a multi-purpose multi-use facility. Often the old pool decks need to be removed to install new piping. We usually see additions of a splash deck and slides, along with other pool amenities such as a climbing wall.
Case Study: Kendrick Pool (Sheridan, Wyoming)
One of our most recent pool projects is Kendrick Pool in Sheridan Wyoming. Kendrick Pool was built in 1937 by Evelyn and Edward Moore, who presented the pool to the City of Sheridan. Much as it is today, the pool was used as a service to the community rather than a way to make money. The City funded the utilities and the chemicals, but the Kiwanis Club managed the pool. That meant they staffed and maintained the pool throughout the years. Eventually, as the Kiwanis Club diminished in size and revenue, the City assigned the Sheridan Recreation District the responsibility of running the pool. That organization has been doing that since the mid-1980s. Kendrick Park pool celebrated its 85th birthday in 2022. The pool still offers swim lessons, private parties, and regular old swimming fun from the first of June to the end of August each year and the pool sees more than 20,000 swimmers each summer. When Associated Pool Builders, (North Dakota), inspected the pool in 2012, they gave the pool another five years of life expectancy. In 2014 a condition assessment that was conducted by TSP was released showing that while the Kendrick Pool site has been well maintained over nearly the last century, it has seen extensive use and been affected by the seasons over time.
Interstate Engineering’s Aquatics team was hired to create a 30% complete pool design in 2019. During our initial feasibility studies, we explored rehabilitation vs. total site relocation. We quickly learned that there weren’t many good options for relocation, not to mention very high land prices and exorbitant construction costs associated with a new construction option. The current location was ideal for a public pool and there were no known environmental or structural issues that would prevent the current pool site from being rehabilitated and updated for continued use. Moving forward with that opportunity in mind our initial discussions with various stakeholders led to discussions around the pool’s uses in conjunction with the recent nearby YMCA addition of an indoor aquatic center. We navigated fears of competition for attendance and overlapping programs and amenities by listening to the objections. The overall discussion led to agreement that despite the proximity and similarity of the projects, they were fundamentally different enough in both the type and use that a any competitiveness for patronage would be minimal. We also navigated a request to make the pool competition sized and program it for outdoor swim team competitions. We quickly realized that the site wasn’t big enough to facilitate a pool of that magnitude along with spectator seating and that the swim team would have to continue to have their practices and meets at the current indoor pool at the junior high.
This image shows the competition pool’s area requirement overlaid on the existing pool.
The Public Involvement Plan
We wanted a website to distribute and collect information from and there were a few key elements we wanted to incorporate into it. It needed to have the pool’s history available, it needed to include information regarding the current assessments of the pool site, and it needed to have our proposed solutions presented. We wanted our surveys to be in digital and print format, demographically unbiased, and strategically collected for easy and open accessibility to all. Our public meetings likewise were going to need to be centrally located, strongly promoted, and well-staffed. Media therefore needed to be well placed, informative, and resourceful.
Out of The Box Solutions
Because of my background I knew that GIS could largely facilitate a host of public involvement functions. We decided to leverage ESRI’s online application solutions in various ways to give us some necessary tools to present and collect information. Web-based and easily deployable we landed on an ArcGIS HUB to be our digital source location for communication. We leveraged the ArcGIS Story Maps application to present information and the ArcGIS Survey123 application to help us collect feedback. We also used ESRI’s Crowdsource Polling application and a non-ESRI based solution called Survey Legend for further polling functionality. These solutions have customizable templates that are easily configured and deployable and are able to work on any mobile device.
Print vs. Digital Media
These days digital media is relatively easy to create and manage. Analysis is typically easier to do as well. One nice aspect of most digital solutions is the ability to track IP, (Internet Protocol), addresses, these addresses are unique to each device used to submit responses and help to verify the submissions’ authenticity while allowing the submitter to remain anonymous. People could attach photos too with most of these solutions while some, like the crowdsourcing application we used, allowed for the editing or suppression of inappropriate comments and photos. One unforeseen downside to digital data representations is its vulnerability to slow internet connections and the general public’s overall low attention span.
Printed media however remains a tried-and-true way of reaching folks too. Being less technical, it can appeal to a higher range of demographic, but can also be used to solicit a more specific group of people as well. Some downsides, however, would include its vulnerability to fraudulent use, and its overall higher maintenance needs. It constantly needs to be checked on and replenished at it’s points of public dispersion as well as taking a greater amount of effort to record and report on.
A combination of the two can give a “greater than the sum” result in response and effectiveness. Whether digital or print it’s good to keep them succinctly coherent. Form, font, branding, and content should all be as consistent as possible and not only for marketing purposes but also for the downstream data utilization, merging, and reporting. When combining information derived from multiple sources like digital and print it is ideal to make it as mergeable as possible for analysis. In other words a data point being solicited in one form of media should have its counterpart in any other presented forms as well. Without careful thought on the front-end planning a heavy lift can be created during the back-end evaluation of the derived information.
It's good to give people options which is why we included all our printed content with links to the website and the digital surveys. We placed printed surveys in public places like City Hall and the Public Library. We also showed up with printed surveys at the junior high school and had our digital survey blasted to the high school kids through their web-based schoolwide portal known as infinite campus. Along with the surveys, whether digital or printed, we had concept boards. The concept boards presented the design concepts along with amenity options that helped people visually connect the dots between a design’s inclusion or exclusion of any given item and its overall effect on design and cost. Throughout the survey process we collected over 1,000 responses from men, women, and children of various ages and background that helped us to decide on the amenities that the project should include as well as the overall design concept most desired.
Public Meetings
We hosted two public meeting events throughout the public involvement process. The first of which occurred about halfway through the public involvement portion of the project and was held at the junior high school. The meeting set the stage for a candid individual public discussion about any concerns and objections people had for the different proposed ideas and the overall conceptual design layouts. The Mayor and City Council representatives were present along with City Planning and Engineering staff. Interstate Engineering’s Aquatic’s Team shared the concepts and fielded questions and concerns as well as passed out and collected surveys.
The second meeting was held at the local senior citizens center and facilitated a similar approach but in a more formalized way. A presentation was made by the Interstate Engineering Aquatics team where we presented the collected information and the resulting proposed conceptual design. The information shared showed what people wanted as well as what they did not want. After the presentation a Q&A was conducted with a panel consisting of the Interstate Engineering Aquatics team as well as the City staff and officials.
Other Media Outlets
Newspapers are still good communication tools for the older demographic who might otherwise be siloed from communication. The local newspaper was invited to every council meeting and every public meeting for the project, and it proved fruitful in getting the word out and causing a buzz. We also leveraged a local radio show called Public Pulse where a live radio interview was heard by 10,000 listeners. It’s hard to measure its exact but receiving a 5-30 percent response rate is considered effective in any survey effort.
Kendrick Pool Project Public Involvement Process Recap:
Website Project Landing Page
Pool history and current condition, (inspection report data), story map link. (ESRI Story Map)
The approved proposed layout options. (PDF, Embedded)
Pool Amenities Survey (Survey Legend)
Survey Handout (For Schools) See Attached Survey PDF (November 19, 2019)
Surveyed 6th, 7th, and 8th graders at SJHS
Presented Pool Layouts and tallied votes.
Shared online survey option for SHS students.
Public Meetings (November 14th at SJHS, and December 5th at the HUB)
Presentation Easels
Used Printed Surveys
Inspection Reports
Sheets with website link/QR code
Stakeholders round table Q/A discussion
Radio Advertisement/Interview (Public Pulse) October 21, 2019
Project Description
Public Meeting Announcement
How to get involved info
Newspaper Articles
Project Description
Public Meeting Announcement
Posters/info
Put up designs and set out surveys at the Public Library, and City Hall.
About the Author
Jason Boucher, GISP is the GIS Group Lead for Interstate Engineering. He manages GIS projects throughout Interstate’s market area performing GIS services including data collection, management, mapping, analysis, and web-based deployments. Jason has been applying GIS to various industries during his career which include Civil Engineering, Land Surveying, Urban Planning, Environmental Assessment, and Natural Resource Permitting. With an education background from MSU-B, NWCCD, SDSMT, and UOPX he has over 15 years of education and experience with Geographical Information Systems.