CBWRA biased and unprofessional ‘consultation’ on fountains – please vote for the final option (option 3) – no more money should be wasted on the fountains
| Stop CBWRA wasting even more of our money on electricity and endless repairs and maintenance on the fountains – vote for the final option ‘‘I am against spending money on submersible pumps and would rather leave the fountains inoperable until the long-term fountains options are studied, decided on and installed” If you are a CBW leaseholder, you should have received a ‘consultation’ survey on 22.7.23 in relation to the fountains. If you have not received it please contact info@cbwra.com These are the voting options 1) I am in favour of spending money on submersible pumps and paying lower energy costs until the long-term fountains options are studied, decided on and installed. 2) I am against spending money on submersible pumps and would rather pay higher energy costs until the long-term fountains options are studied, decided on and installed. 3) I am against spending money on submersible pumps and would rather leave the fountains inoperable until the long-term fountains options are studied, decided on and installed. Note the incredibly biased and confusing wording in the ‘survey’ options and the absence of the option which in my view most residents want – i.e. filling in/planting some or all of the fountains. The ‘no new pumps’ vote will likely be split across options 2 and 3 so it is not at all clear what would happen if these two options add up to (for example 55%, i.e. supported by a majority) but option 1 has the largest single share (e.g. 45%). Therefore in my view this is an unprofessional, confused and biased consultation. CBWRA insults our intelligence with this consultation, just like the ‘vote’ on appointing Urang. It is obvious that if new pumps are installed (as CBWRA are recommending), no one will vote for them to be taken out and the fountains filled in. That may be the point of this CBWRA ‘consultation’. |
 Rendall and Rittner have finally supplied the figures on the cost of electricity for running the fountains – it is £140,000 a year which works out to over £10 a month for each apartment just for the ELECTRICITY for the fountains. This does not include the cost of maintenance, relining, repainting which as all residents know has been huge. £13,000 was allegedly wasted when CBWRA ordered the wrong colour of paint for the fountains (deep blue) which then had to be redone in the correct lighter shade. The final cost of the relining and maintenance since is unknown. Electricity costs MIGHT be reduced if the electricity price comes down but there is no guarantee on that given the appalling way in which Rendall and Rittner have handled the retendering of the electricity supply. Even if electricity costs come down with new pumps / a fall is electricity prices, there is no guarantee that maintenance costs will reduce. Spending further money on new pumps before a vote has been taken on whether to fill in the some or all of the fountains is of course a nonsense. In my view, it is an attempt to sabotage a vote on filling in some or all of the fountains. It is obvious that there cannot be a meaningful vote on filling in the fountains once new pumps have been fitted. A great deal of the cost associated with the fountains (especially the relining which CBWRA state has cost ‘a lot of money’ : note they do not say exactly how much!) could have been avoided if the CBWRA and specifically the former Chair, Stephen Thompson, had listened to what residents said in the 2021 Residents’ survey which I designed and carried out. The most popular option in that survey was to carry out a feasibility study regarding filling in some or all of the fountains. This finding was ignored and indeed at times denied – Mr Thompson insisted on at least one occasion on the record that the majority of residents were in favour of the status quo (i.e. leaving the fountains as is) which is (to say the least) not a valid interpretation of the survey results. In April this year CBWRA sent residents a bizarre document which greatly understated the cost of running the fountains (by omitting the cost of electricity!) and stated that CBWRA were starting a ‘sinking fund’ to pay for new fountains! It was as ‘pro fountain’ as it is possible to get. It was quite clear to me while on the committee that most of the (unelected) committee supported keeping the fountains, regardless of what residents thought. I raised this issue at the AGM in May 2022 and residents were then promised a vote. I said then that this promise would not be honoured and indeed it was not – we got to the AGM in May 2023 without any vote on the fountains and I raised the question again – and the unfairly elected co-Chairs Larissa Villar Hauser and Louis Sebastian Kendall were unable to explain why there had not been such a vote. If you vote for new pumps then it is quite clear that the case for filling in the fountains will be dead in the water (or lack of water). I my view this is what CBWRA are hoping for – that you vote for new pumps and then they can say ”look – maintenance costs are greatly reduced we no longer need to fill them in”! or ”why would we take out new pumps and fill in the fountains?”. The wording of the options in this ‘consultation’ very biased (in my professional view as someone with more than 25 years research/consultation experience) and is intended to make option 1 the most attractive and the other 2 options to seem unreasonable/unattractive. The committee appear to be explicitly recommending option one which they say has Berkeley Homes’ support. Therefore if you want to avoid wasting further money on the fountains I strongly advise you to ignore what CBWRA are recommending and vote for option 3 (the last one): ”I am against spending money on submersible pumps and would rather leave the fountains inoperable until the long-term fountains options are studied, decided on and installed”. Note that two issues have been conflated by CBWRA in this response option (being against spending money on pumps AND wishing to leave the fountains inoperable). Asking about two separate aspects in one response option is of course extremely bad practice. Being against new pumps does not mean you necessarily support the fountain being inoperable for some (unspecified) period of time – this is heavily biased wording, designed to put you off supporting this option. It is also notable that an ‘order effect’ is created by putting the response options in what seems to be CBWRA’s order of preference -i.e. the options the support most comes first and the option they least support comes last. It is a simple matter to set ‘randomisation’ in surveymonkey to avoid such bias. Because three (confused) options have been offered, the results may be open to interpretation with no clear winning option. Consider the three options below. 1) I am in favour of spending money on submersible pumps and paying lower energy costs until the long-term fountains options are studied, decided on and installed. 2) I am against spending money on submersible pumps and would rather pay higher energy costs until the long-term fountains options are studied, decided on and installed. 3) I am against spending money on submersible pumps and would rather leave the fountains inoperable until the long-term fountains options are studied, decided on and installed. Now, what if votes for options 2 and 3 (both being variations of ”no pumps”) add up to say 55% and option 1 has 45%. That means option 1 (new pumps) is the winner technically – with the biggest single vote, although a majority would have voted for no pumps). The whole thing is a mess and how much of that is incompetence and how much deliberate hard to say. I have asked CBWRA to clarify how they will decide what the winning option is and also whether the consultation is advisory or binding, They have not replied. ***update** The resident who was leading on the work around planting options has resigned from that work in protest at the biased consultation. In my view, CBWRA are also trying to exaggerate the length of time needed to assess the technical aspects of filling in the fountains – they have had years to do this work and it could have been completed a long time ago if there was a will to do so. It should have been done before a consultation with residents. CBWRA state ‘It is extremely important that you complete the survey so we can be confident that the RA is putting forward a representative view.’ Well, that frankly is nonsense because whatever the results of this survey (and we have no way to independently verify them) they will NOT allow CBWRA to ”put forward a representative view” because this is an extremely biased and unprofessional consultation which pushes residents heavily towards CBWRA’s preferred option (install new pumps) and does not even offer the option which many or most want (filing in/planting some or all of the fountains). We should not spend more money on the fountains until we have an honest vote on filling in or not filling in the fountains. Not a penny more should be spent on the fountains until we have that vote, which should be a simple choice between two options (planting specified fountains or not planting specified fountains), with clear wording and without CBWRA favouring either of the options. This ‘consultation’ by CBWRA is confused, biased and unprofessional in my view. Regardless of whether you are for or against the fountains, I recommend that you vote as I have suggested above (”I am against spending money on submersible pumps and would rather leave the fountains inoperable until the long-term fountains options are studied, decided on and installed”.) Voting for any other option means that we will never have a proper choice in the matter. Personally I favour filling in (planting) the 4 rectangular fountains and keeping the circular ones. I think this is a majority view but appreciate many people may think otherwise, and that is why we need a genuine consultation, not this farcical and biased ‘survey’ from CBWRA which has a clear agenda of spending even more of our money on the fountains. |
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