Hearing voices

County could have benefited from market research

It’s easy these days for people to believe they know everything they need to know just because of the high volume of information readily available.

We visit with people in our social circles. We might even strike up conversations down at the mercantile. And of course we get plenty of feedback on digital media platforms.

Any social scientist — the folks who study the way people interact with each other — can tell you we humans aren’t all that good at maintaining a diversified audience of friends, family, acquaintances and strangers who might help give us a good overall base of knowledge on this issue or that. Instead, we self-select. That is, we tend to hear from people who are in many ways a lot like us.

While we like to believe we’re in an age of high-octane exchanges of information that make us more informed, there’s plenty of evidence we’re voluntarily putting on blinders, those devices for horses that keep them from seeing anything that’s not right in front of them.

Benton County Judge Barry Moehring knows the county’s elected leaders need good information, because good information gives them the best chance to make good decisions on behalf of the thousands of people they all represent.

Those officials have serious decisions to make as they continue their saga-like deliberations about constructing a new facility to consolidate their judges and courtrooms — now spread all over downtown — into a more efficient single building capable of growing as Benton County’s population does. The justices of the peace who serve on the Quorum Court and county judges have talked about this for years. And they’ve talked. And talked.

Moehring has advanced the project with a push to place the building downtown, an idea the Quorum Court got behind. He’s developed floor plans that’s promoted conversation about needs and costs. And in recent days, he suggested it was time to hire a market research firm to help get a clearer picture of what Benton County residents want.

Let’s not pretend scores of county residents show up at Quorum Court meetings to engage in deep discussions about county needs. No, justices of the peace don’t get much in the way of public participation in their deliberations. So Moehring thought it prudent to use a disciplined, expert approach to seek feedback from county residents, who may ultimately be asked to approve of the project and a way to pay for it.

But early last week, Moehring withdrew those plans for lack of support on the Quorum Court. No doubt the potential $50,000 price tag gave some officials heartburn, but when the county is considering a building that might cost $30 million and last for 50, 75 or 100 years, that cost is a minuscule investment. But some justices of the peace said they’re elected by the people and can develop their own feel for what the public wants by listening to the people they interact with.

That’s a nice idea, but Benton County isn’t a little backwoods area where everyone knows everyone anymore. If you were to walk down the street asking county residents to name their justice of the peace, we’d bet the vast majority would have an answer. But that answer would be “What’s a justice of the peace? Aren’t those the people who can do marriages?”

So, no, we don’t have a lot of faith the justices of the peace will get a reasonably legitimate evaluation of what Benton County residents are ready to support and what they’re not. Moehring’s plan would have provided solid information from across a wide spectrum of residents.

“Even if we were all to go out and walk our districts for an hour a day we wouldn’t hit all of our districts,” Justice of the Peace Joel Jones said back in January. “Town halls are only going to get a tiny, tiny bit of the districts.”

And, generally speaking, it’s far easier to get people who are against something to show up at events than it is to get a good cross-section of the population. That’s not to say town meetings are useless — they serve a vital purpose of connecting voters to their representatives — but they don’t provide a reliable picture of the mood of the populace.

Justices of the peace, just like the rest of us, can also be subject to those self-selection tendencies.

The last courthouse in Benton County was completed in 1928. It’s not like these kinds of public facilities are built every day. Spending $ 50,000 could have given the county more comfort that they’re going in the direction their constituents want or might have given them some warning about key aspects of the project the public doesn’t like.

It appears the Quorum Court believes there’s only one poll that counts, and that’s done at the voting box. There’s no arguing that point at all. But lost elections can set public projects back for years. A little professional market research could help keep that from happening and help the county fashion a project voters are willing to support.

Benton County needs a place where the growing court caseload can be handled with security and efficiency. The Quorum Court has already discussed this, at least the current iteration, for more than five years, but talk of a courts solution has been going on decades.

In other words, long enough.