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Philadelphia Research Initiative Poll (.pdf) as reported today on Philly.com:

Of the 800 respondents, 48 percent said they preferred to receive fewer services but pay no more in taxes, and 35 percent indicated they would rather pay higher taxes and not reduce services.
…
Among its other findings, 53 percent of those asked opposed Nutter’s plan to raise the sales tax from 7 to 8 percent. And 68 percent objected to increasing the city wage tax, an idea that Nutter rejected but that Council is exploring.

Let’s go back a few months to December.  Research 2000 poll sponsored by Young Philly Politics:

Philadelphians want Mayor to wait on [service] cuts and 84% would give up wage tax cut to prevent ‘em.

So one poll says don’t raise our taxes, rather cut our services to balance the budget (but do it somehow without laying off any workers?!?!) and another says keep our services and we’re willing to pay higher taxes than we otherwise would. What are we to conclude from that?

As Dan U-A at YPP writes about the latest poll:

The answers to this poll don’t mean people are schizophrenic, or stupid, or that people “don’t want to make the tough choices—they want their leaders to make the choices for them.” People were asked a set of questions, and answered them reasonably. But when looking at the results, it is simply useful to remember what questions were asked, and what were not.

And I would go one step further.  Polls are fine to get a snapshot of emotions or feelings about candidates or other very simple to understand questions. But when it comes to complicated, nuanced, multifaceted public policy issues like budgets, which are about as complicated as it gets, they are totally useless. People need to be given at least a bare minimum of information before making these decisions.  Most of the respondents probably don’t even know how much a property tax increase would end up costing them (for me… it would be about $15 per month the first year, $12 the second).

The budget workshops, decried by some - including Councilwoman Tasco who didn’t attend ANY of them - as “self-selected” were at least attended by a group of people who have thought about this issue and who received a bit of education about it before coming to a decision. It may not be a perfect process but at least the info didn’t come from people who were trying to get through the phone call as quickly as possible so they wouldn’t miss any of American Idol.

(Full disclosure: WHYY had a role in organizing and publicizing the citizen budget workshops.)