Orange County NC Website
statistically significant, is really important in terms of identifying the needs and opinions and views of the 298 <br />County residents. The community engagement window, did I get those numbers right? There were only like 299 <br />16 online surveys? 300 <br /> 301 <br />Leigh Anne King: That's right. I was surprised about that too. That is, as Emily was stating, that is not 302 <br />normal. Even before the pandemic, most communities that we work with, very few people show up at the 303 <br />public meetings, the in-person meetings, and a lot more folks respond online, and it was kind of the flip, here in 304 <br />Orange County, which was interesting. That it's a good thing, I think people are feeling safe to come out and 305 <br />go to these meetings, which is good. But there's something about in-person engagement, maybe, that they're 306 <br />more attracted to, than doing a survey online. And part of that could be, because you do have a lot— the 307 <br />Climate Action Plan, the Strategic Plan, the Land Use Plan—there’s been a lot of surveys and public 308 <br />engagement, and that might be part of the reason why there weren’t more higher level of online responses as 309 <br />well. 310 <br /> 311 <br />Lamar Proctor: Well, I do think that more data is better. So, anything that we can do to facilitate the next 312 <br />round… Will there be another round of online surveys? I know that this one's closed. 313 <br /> 314 <br />Leigh Anne King: Every engagement round comes with both an online and an in-person component. And 315 <br />they're the same thing, so it makes it accessible if folks' schedules don't permit them to come to the meeting. 316 <br /> 317 <br />Lamar Proctor: Well, I think knowing that we had such a low number on the online, we should be 318 <br />cognizant of that, in the next window to try and get links out to as many sources as possible. 319 <br /> 320 <br />Leigh Anne King: I think that's right. And that probably is part of the story behind why we didn't have folks in 321 <br />the younger age brackets, that Emily was mentioning, because that's where get, typically speaking, we get a 322 <br />lot of feedback from those groups online. 323 <br /> 324 <br />Lamar Proctor: I felt when I read the community stakeholder interview themes, that they didn't really… I 325 <br />guess my question is, how did y'all present that? How was that decided on the narratives there? Was it just 326 <br />verbatim from people? How did you compile those interviews and present them in this format? 327 <br /> 328 <br />Leigh Anne King: So, what we did was we tried to organize under key critical topics that we were hearing 329 <br />about from multiple interviewees, or survey respondents, across the 57 interviews and the survey responses 330 <br />that we received. Some of these issues are, many people, if not all people, were speaking to them. Some of 331 <br />them had maybe fewer responses. This was more of a qualitative exercise than the quantitative exercise that 332 <br />we just showed you with respect to the community engagement, so there may have been some issues that 333 <br />maybe we only heard from 5 or 10 people about, but we feel like as, with our expertise and our experience, 334 <br />that this is an important issue to be raising, even if the entire group was not necessarily speaking to it, it's an 335 <br />important idea to be sharing and publishing as part of this report. 336 <br /> 337 <br />Lamar Proctor: Because there was, in the stakeholder interview themes and narratives, there was a much 338 <br />stronger push for development that I don't think was reflected in the surveys and the community engagement, 339 <br />and I was wondering if you noticed that, if I'm misreading that, or if – 340 <br /> 341 <br />Leigh Anne King: I think that's right. That's part of the reason why I kept the economic development stool 342 <br />on the Sustainable Development Venn Diagram, because, not to underplay the community engagement, I 343 <br />think it's very important, but there are also some important stakeholders that we met with in this process that 344 <br />had a slightly different view about things, and those inputs are important as well in this process. So, we're 345 <br />collectively looking at all those inputs, even if they don't match up. And that's going to happen. That's very 346 <br />12