We feel like we have a good handle on how this region feels through thousands of responses each month to questions we put on the table through text messages, stories and podcasts. More than 1,550 people subscribe to text messages I send out each weekday morning about stories we are working on, questions we wish to answer and the like. They have proven to be a smart focus group for us, offering us a breadth of perspectives that help in our reporting. (You can subscribe for free at https://joinsubtext.com/chrisquinn.) For example, when we talk about Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish’s plan to put the new jail atop soil laden with cancer-causing chemicals, the vast majority of those who respond oppose the idea, while others pose extra questions that should be answered before decisions are made. What we don’t get from this, though, is a response that is statistically valid. Wouldn’t it be helpful for elected officials to know what percentage of county residents oppose forcing jail guards to work over top of poison? Or what percentage opposes borrowing $31 million in a plan to dump another $50 million-plus into the building formerly known as the Medical Mart? We aim to do something about that. We have arranged to partner with the Community Research Institute at Baldwin Wallace University to find out what Northeast Ohio thinks about the local issues we’ve been reporting on recently. We’ve had a long and fruitful relationship with Tom Sutton and Lauren Copeland at the institute and are glad to have another opportunity to collaborate. First, though, we hope you’ll help us choose the topics. We can’t ask about everything, obviously. Few would participate in a survey lasting hours. We’ve got to focus. To get the conversation started, I’m listing some possibilities here and asking for your response. If you could select one to three of those that interest you and send me an email, I’d be grateful. More important, though, are your ideas. What topics not included here would you like to see explored? One caveat: We’re not looking for horse race questions about candidates seeking office or politics in general. We want to use the money we are spending to find out how this region feels about specific questions that sit before us or our elected officials. Here’s a start: Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish and the county council want to perpetually raise the county portion of the sales tax to pay for a new jail and justice center, while others prefer holding off on those projects for a few years, until the county exhausts existing debt and has more capacity to pay. Should we ask whether people favor a perpetual increase in the sales tax? The texts and emails we receive overwhelmingly oppose this. Would it be useful to document the sentiment in a statistically pure survey? Cleveland’s contract with the Browns means that the city will soon have a big bill for modernizing the football stadium, which likely will lead to a discussion about building a new one. For example, if the city has to spend $400 million on modernization to fulfill its contract, the question could be whether the city should put that toward a new stadium, with the Browns, the NFL or even county taxpayers coming up with the rest. Would you be interested in learning whether the region would support building a new stadium? The Deshaun Watson story has been one of the biggest in Cleveland this year. We’ve heard from large numbers of fans that they will no longer follow the team because it brought on the quarterback who the league found sexually abused massage therapists. Some people, however, have predicted that most fans will stand by the team. Would you be interested in a survey that indicates how many local fans the team has lost over the issue? I mentioned the former Medical Mart above. What about asking people if they support putting the county $31 million deeper into debt for a plan to spend more than $50 million to make the building work more efficiently as part of the county’s convention center? Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb proposes to use tax dollars to pay for the transportation of city residents seeking abortions to states where the procedure is legal. Should we ask about that policy? We’ve been talking for more than 20 years about closing Burke Lakefront Airport and opening a huge swath of the Cleveland lakefront to public use. Should we? Where would this question rank among your choices for our survey? If all of Cuyahoga County were a single municipality, it would be the 10th largest city in America, giving it a swagger that we don’t have now. Would you favor a question about dissolving municipal boundaries to expand the city of Cleveland to cover the entirety of Cuyahoga County? What about some lighter topics? We could ask which defunct restaurant from Cleveland history people would most like to see return. We learned recently that Ohio is a leader in the hours people devote to video games, so we could ask what their favorites are? As I said above, this list is just a start, to spark your thoughts. If you have some, please share by sending an email to [email protected]. Thanks for reading. | 