Who's Behind a Push Poll Against Holland City Fiber?
Holland residents are getting texted with a Push Poll, a survey designed to sway opinion. This one doesn’t seem to want you to vote yes.
It arrives as a text message,
"Hello, this is G1 Research. We are conducting a political survey today in Michigan. Share your opinion confidentially here…"
It begins with some basic questions, and then gets to fiber questions:
"How much would you say you have seen, read, or heard recently about a plan to expand the City of Holland’s broadband internet to provide services to homes and businesses in the city?"
After a question showing the actual ballot language, the next question starts to push:
"And if you learned that this initiative would impose a property tax increase that every single homeowner in Holland would have to pay whether they use the broadband service or not. It would cost an average homeowner at least $150 in the first year and then at least $112 per year for the next 25 years even if they never use the broadband service. And homeowners who do want the broadband for their home would still have to pay an extra connection fee. Would learning this make you more likely to vote yes, in favor of this initiative or more likely to vote no, against it?"
And again:
"If you learned that this initiative would raise the cost of living for residents of Holland, driving up housing costs and making things even harder for residents who are already struggling with the effects of inflation on the cost of everything from gas, to groceries, to healthcare, would that make you more likely to vote yes, in favor of this initiative or more likely to vote no, against it?"
Finally it pulls in some questionable “facts”:
"And if you learned that more than 90% of similar projects around the country have failed to attract customers away from existing broadband providers, leaving taxpayers responsible for bond debt and with higher taxes and that it was recently announced that a similar project in Traverse City is failing, leaving taxpayers responsible for millions of dollars in debt, would that make you more likely to vote yes, in favor of this initiative or more likely to vote no, against it?"
It ends with some demographic questions.
So who’s paying for this? I certainly have some suspicions, but don’t have any details.
What we need to do is get the Holland airport’s marketing team involved. Every time it comes back up, they manage to get a majority of people in the city of Holland to pay for an airport that only the 1% can afford to use.
Probably the same people lobbying the state because they feel municipal utilities are not competitive. Or think it’s okay to incentivize property managers to only allow Xfinity on their property.
I got the robo-call version of this on my old landline number. I’ll say somebody really wants to keep their monopoly.