Monday, January 26, 2009

Statistical Errors

In reading the local news stories last week about Mayor Schonhardt's campaigning for the City of Hilliard to shift to a City Manager form of government now that he's term limited, I almost missed the little shot he took at the end of the story, as reported by Jeff Donohue of This Week.

The Mayor said: "The next time you read a letter to the editor laying an exploding student population on Hilliard's doorstep, just remember the number 27 and remember that is the extent by which we are contributing to the growth of Hilliard City Schools."

I've written more than one of those letters, as have other readers of this blog. Apparently, 27 is the number of residential building permits issued by the City of Hilliard in the last year.

This reminds me of a dialog I had with a fellow motorcyclist who felt there was no real reason to wear a helmet while riding. He backed up his position with this statistic: "In half of all motorcycle fatalities, the rider is wearing a helmet." Therefore he said, it's a crap shoot whether the helmet does any good, so you might as well enjoy riding without one.

I suggested to him that there would seem to be a statistic which is more meaningful: Of the number of riders who survived a motorcycle accident, what fraction of them was wearing a helmet? My friend's statistic only looked at the universe of bikers who had been killed. I'd prefer to understand what allowed riders to survive.

According to the US Dept of Transportation, there were 294,000 non-fatal single-vehicle motorcycle accidents in the period between 1990 and 1999. In the same period, there were 11,038 fatal single-vehicle bike accidents. 48% of the people killed were wearing a helmet – my friend's statistic. But note that there were 283,000 bike accidents that were non-fatal – 25 times as many. In what fraction of those was the helmet a critical reason for survival, or a reduction of the seriousness of injury? I don't know that answer, but it's the one I would want to know before deciding whether or not to take my helmet off – which I always wear by the way (however, I support the freedom to choose).

So what does that have to do with the Mayor's statistic about housing permits?

He doesn't say how many permits he turned down, did he?

My guess is that this number is zero, or pretty close. Perhaps there were only 27 residential building permits issued in the City of Hilliard last year because we have a nationwide housing market collapse. Maybe the Mayor hasn't noticed.

How about the past 10 years Mr. Mayor? How many building permits have been issued since you were first elected to City Council? Good grief, entire new massive neighborhoods have come into existence during that period, notably those along Alton-Darby Rd.

And you have fought mightily to preserve the right to annex new residential development land into the City of Hilliard, including more than 800 acres annexed in the last few months.

It seems to the alert observer that this unfortunate downturn of the economy has messed with the ability for you to get every square inch of residential land inside the boundaries of the water services agreement built out before you leave office as Mayor. Converting to a City Manager system could extend the window of opportunity to get this done with you still sitting at the controls. What's in it for you?

How is any residential development good for either the City or the School District?

4 comments:

  1. He doesn't say how many permits he turned down, did he?
    My guess is that this number is zero, or pretty close. Perhaps there were only 27 residential building permits issued in the City of Hilliard last year because we have a nationwide housing market collapse. Maybe the Mayor hasn't noticed.

    Great point Paul!

    You should send a synopsis of this post to the Northwest News as a response to the Mayor's boast.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The story also states "he (Schonhardt) said only 27 housing permits were approved for single-family dwelling in the past year." What about multi-family dwellings?

    Check out:

    http://www.biahomebuilders.com/media/Building%20Permits/franklin_county_2008_building_permits.pdf

    The BIA site does not clarify if this is the number of permit applications or permits approved, but even if only a portion of the 193 multi-family permits in their statistics for Hilliard 2008 were actually approved, this a significant amount of potential students.

    It would be nice if the paper actually followed up on the mayor's "research" rather than just regurgitating his talking points.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for the additional info Kel!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I sent a response to This Week - we'll see if they print it. Their editorial page again now says they welcome letters to the editor, and since the article appeared there, I sent it to them. Would not be the first time they did not print something I wrote though. I'll copy it here if they don't.

    ReplyDelete