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Palatka commissioners question Esri-derived data; consultants say they will validate or omit
Summary
Board members flagged multiple apparent errors in the consultant's Esri-derived slides (education rates, business counts, job totals). Consultant said Esri is a general-purpose tool and agreed to omit or re-validate data for the public draft and rely on county tax-roll and custom analysis where needed.
During the presentation, several commissioners flagged apparent inaccuracies in demographic and business data the consultant presented from Esri, including education attainment, business sector counts and jobs totals. One commissioner said the slide showing 31% of residents lacking a high-school diploma "surprises me" and questioned the accuracy.
Consultant Claudia Ray acknowledged the limitations of Esri for small municipalities and told the board: "This is like precook...we don't. When we do a customized market analysis from municipalities, we do go to the main sourcescribe, and we do the analysis and methodologies ourselves." She said when the team is not scoped to do a custom market analysis the Esri outputs are used as an initial snapshot, but added that if the board wants more precise market numbers the consultants can produce a custom analysis.
Board members requested that the consultant remove inaccurate Esri-derived numbers from the draft plan and either replace them with county-sourced figures or explicitly note the data source and margin-of-error. The consultant agreed to omit the disputed data from the public-facing plan and to provide the board with more reliable sources or offer a scoped market analysis as an optional add-on.
