The reservoir's historic structures & ecosystems are an opportunity to create a unique environmental education center for our children & their future.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Error or deception

In my last post I wrote that The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation created a webpage with several online surveys. The page is called "PlaNYC Park Surveys" and has survey forms for:

* McCarren Park Pool
* Rockaway Beach
* The High Bridge
* Fort Washington Park
* Highland Park (Ridgewood Reservoir)

Unfortunately, I discovered a troubling HTML code error on the survey pages. Despite the department's request for feedback from the public for several different parks, some responses are programmed to be routed incorrectly. I have written to the parks department twice and have not received a response, nor have the webpages been corrected. In addition, the public has only just been notified of the survey and given 10 days to respond.

Below are the lines of code in question. I have included the relevant HTML code from the other survey pages for comparison. You can see that there are errors, intentional or otherwise, for both Highland Park and Fort Washington Park. The apparent result would be that any submissions from the Highland Park, McCarren Park Pool, and Fort Washington Park survey pages would all be submitted as McCarren Park Pool responses:



I fear that parks might claim public disinterest with respect to the development of Ridgewood Reservoir and proceed with any plan that they desire. The Department of Parks and Recreation has to be pressured to make public that there was an error on the website and that they have corrected it and are extending the comment period.

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