By Andrew Fefer, Reporter/Editor
An Eau Claire neighborhood association is reaching out to everyone in hopes of gathering input on its largest park, the neighborhood as a whole and inclusion and equity among the people who live there.
The Eastside Hill Neighborhood Association Steering Committee is accepting responses to a survey it created with the help of four UW-Eau Claire students. The survey appeared online and in hard copy form in late March. It includes 22 questions and is open to anyone, not just those living in the neighborhood.
“We wanted to give them a voice,” Steering Committee President Mark Ruddy said of the people in the greater community who may use Boyd Park, which is on Main Street. “We didn’t want this to be a survey just to those people who are already connected to our neighborhood association. We were looking for ways to broaden the access to the survey.”
Ruddy said that the neighborhood includes 2,200 households. Its boundaries, as defined by the survey, are the Eau Claire River to the north, Hastings Way to the east, Brackett and Harding Avenues to the south, and up to, but not including, Dewey Street to the west.
Ruddy said that his understanding is that the group received more than 300 responses to the survey in its first week, but emphasized that many more are needed to ensure that the effort results in generating informed discussion on neighborhood issues. He did not have a specific goal when asked how many responses the committee would like to receive.
“We still want to hear from everyone,” he added.
The questions
Ruddy said the group balanced the need for input on several topics with a desire to keep the survey somewhat concise. In hard copy form, he said the survey takes up approximately four pages (with questions on both sides of each page).
Some of the association’s questions touch upon the use of the park, and others address how people feel about the way the steering committee does its job. There are also questions about the work of the association’s diversity committee, whose goal is to address issues of being welcoming toward neighbors as well as inclusivity and equity in the neighborhood and the greater Chippewa Valley.
It also asks whether respondents feel the steering committee should act on ideas that it believes would improve the quality of life in the neighborhood.
Some of the questions on the survey are multiple choice, while others ask for respondents to give their thoughts on specific issues.
How the survey started
Ruddy said that a member of the committee had urged it to set goals for the neighborhood on a yearly basis, rather than reacting to issues as they come up. He said that sparked a process that included members suggesting potential goals and strategic planning for the year at the committee’s March meeting. There was also a discussion about how the committee could receive more input from neighbors.
“There was always repeated talk at our regular monthly meetings about Boyd (Park),” Ruddy said. “‘We can only do this with the playground equipment,’ or the different styles of playground equipment.”
“People would express concern or interest, and yet nobody would follow up on it.”
Late last year, Ruddy had heard from a friend, Shelly Sutley, that she had worked with a UW-Eau Claire class to receive help with her efforts to establish habitat for bluebirds that are being challenged by invasive species (Ruddy said Sutley is known as “The Bluebird Lady”).
“Our neighborhood wouldn’t have the energy for if we didn’t have some outside help with it,” Ruddy added.
With the help of Scott Lester, professor of a Management course at UW-Eau Claire, students Neil Miller, Brett St. Aubin, Luis De La Pena and Joseph Sahr came on board to help. Ruddy said he came up with the questions and Sahr entered them into the university’s surveying program. Miller concentrated on the proposed skateboard plaza and community garden, as well as researching activities for all neighbors. St. Aubin’s focus was safety issues and De La Pena helped to set up an improved format for reporting the steering committee’s monthly finances.
The course deals with leadership in the community. De La Pena, a senior who plans to graduate next month, said the group met with Ruddy at the beginning of the spring semester to get a feel for the project.
“We figured one of the better ways to, I guess, help the community around here is to actually go out and do something for the community, which is helping them improve their neighborhood park,” he said.
“We saw that they had a lot of ambition, and they didn’t have enough volunteers, I guess, or people to step up and take the lead in these projects.”
De La Pena added that the fact that there were more people than just “a few guys” involved in the effort also attracted him to the project. All four students recently met with members of the steering committee and other neighbors at the association’s Annual Spring Meeting to discuss the effort.
The students are required to write three papers and make a 15-minute presentation to complete the project. It also serves as a way for the students to finish 30 hours of service learning, which all UW-Eau Claire students must do in order to graduate.
Lori Bica, a UW-Eau Claire Psychology professor who was also involved in planning the survey, lives near Boyd Park. Her role was to help design the survey and to use software to collect data.
“They really wanted people’s input and they’re trying to touch as many people as possible,” Bica said. “I think they’re kind of a model for bringing in the community feedback and then acting according to that feedback. So, I’ve been pretty impressed.”
Bica will also help the association with data analysis after it has finished collecting the responses
Meeting with the city
About six weeks ago, Ruddy and Miller met with several city employees, including Jeff Pippenger, the city’s Community Services Director who oversees the city’s parks division. The discussion centered around the plan for the survey, which Pippenger said was akin to a master plan in the beginning. He explained to Ruddy and Miller that the city already does master planning for its parks and other areas.
“What I looked at this as, as I explained to Mark and also the university student that was there, was that I see this as more of a…classroom project that has got somewhat real world type of issues that we deal with.”
Pippenger said that the city does surveying of city residents as well. The last one that he said included similar questions to the neighborhood association survey was in 2016. However, Pippenger added that the city’s surveys encompass the entire community rather than an individual area of Eau Claire.
“I wanted to make sure that it was understood that…the city, we do master planning for our parks and we do surveys for our parks and that’s not going to change. If someone wants to do a project like this, that’s fine.”
He also mentioned that the city is accredited through the National Parks and Recreation Association, and that calls for amenities for the different parks to be considered, in part, by looking at the differences between a neighborhood park like Boyd Park and a community park like Phoenix Park or Carson Park. For example, Pippenger said that he agrees with the idea of a small skateboard plaza in the park. He said the department could look at areas for a possible community garden, which is also mentioned in the survey.
The department has increased access to the river in its comprehensive plan, but also is working with a water safety committee on it. Pippenger pointed out that the committee, which works with Eau Claire Fire and Rescue, recommended that Boyd Park was not a good site for river access because of potential difficulty navigating the terrain in the park that leads down to the river bank.
Pippenger said he cautioned Ruddy and Miller to keep those things in mind and to refrain from suggesting amenities that would typically end up in a community park because of the lack of parking at Boyd Park and its proximity to homes.
“What that would create is a lot of problems, not only for us, but for the neighborhood,” Pippenger said. “We have to balance that stuff out.”
De La Pena did not attend the meeting, but has spoken with others in the group about the discussion. He said that he believes the city’s guidelines for projects like the ones mentioned in the survey are “very strict.”
“It’s kind of hard to work with the city to get a lot of these projects done because there’s a lot of ambition behind these, but the city already has their own plans, so they actually have a more weighted say in what’s actually going to be done.”
“They were willing to work with us on some of the parts of the project,” he admitted.
Now that the survey is online, Pippenger said he has had a chance to “look at it briefly.” He said that he thinks the group followed his advice but did include a couple questions that he considers to be geared toward a community park.
Pippenger, himself a UW-Eau Claire alumnus, commended the university for assigning students projects that have “real world” applications. He reflected on having similar experiences while attending the university.
Results currently being gathered
The association has posted a link to the survey on its Facebook page and is directing people to the online survey through bulletin boards in the neighborhood and signs on Little Free Libraries. Ruddy said the group is also distributing paper copies of the surveys.
He did not have a deadline set for when the association would no longer gather responses, but said that the end of June was a possibility.
“I think it’s a good instrument. We kept asking ourselves ‘How can we get quality data?’ So, I don’t want to shorten its life,” Ruddy said.
Ruddy said that the association is encouraging people to respond to the survey online, if possible, because it will be easier for the program it is using to analyze the results that way.
Ruddy hopes that reviewing the outcome of the survey can help the association improve the park and neighborhood, with guidance from the city and on their own.
Pippenger told Ruddy and Miller that he would also look at the findings from the survey after it is completed and “take it for what it’s worth.”
“I’m guessing much of what they’re going to come up with is that we already have it in one of our plans already to discuss,” Pippenger said. “Maybe not some of the amenities they would like to see but, again, we have to make sure that it fits with that neighborhood park.”