DEARBORN — Late last month, Ghassan Hassan was one of about 50 people who showed up to find out the much-anticipated results of the city’s “Master Plan” initiative, a series of surveys and workshops mandated by the state in order to find out the best ways to utilize land for future development.

But one particular response to a survey question caught Hassan and the other attendees off-guard to say the least. 

“What would you change about Dearborn if you could?” asked one question in an online survey as part of the plan from McKenna & Associates of Northville, which was hired by the city to construct the plan.

The first four responses went as expected, with the number one response summarized as “More and Better Retail” and the number two response as “Better Code/Zoning Enforcement” for example.

But the fifth most-popular response is what Hassan said “shocked” virtually the entire room, which included about four other Arab American residents.

“Reduce the Influence of Arabs/Muslims,” the response showed, ironically just above another titled “Bridge Ethnic Divisions.” 

Hassan said the Sept. 20 presentation of the survey at the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center originally made him feel unwelcome and left others shaking their heads. 

“The residents overwhelmingly couldn’t believe it,” he said. “In all honesty when they were doing the presentation I was thinking about things like the parking and other important things going on in the city but the residents were shocked when they saw that.” 

The answer relating to the influence of Arabs and Muslims in the city came from an open-ended question as part of a survey accessible to all residents, according to McKenna. The response summarized write-in comments that were made by 10 people out of a total of 145 people who answered that particular question in the online survey; over 1,000 people answered the online survey as a whole. 

The results of the online survey and the rest of the Master Plan, including the response about Arab and Muslim influence, were scheduled to remain on the city of Dearborn’s website, however, according to Mary Landroche, Director of the City’s Department of Public Information, after they received the results as computer documents from McKenna. 

Amy Chestnut of McKenna, who led the Master Plan sessions, said that the company’s goal was simply to inform the audience. 

“We’re not trying to hide anything, it’s not the city saying this stuff, it’s just us reporting back on the info to date,” Chestnut said. “Our purpose was in presenting, not to make any judgments or decisions.” 

According to Hassan, at least one resident spoke up at the meeting in September taking issue with the response being made public on McKenna’s presentation.

Hassan himself said the way the response was presented made him feel as though a much larger portion of Dearborn residents had an issue with Arab and Muslim influence as opposed to the 10 people who answered it. 

Shown on the city’s website as of press time, the survey results did not include raw data showing the small number of respondents for that particular question. But the results did show the Arab and Muslim influence answer as the fifth-highest response making it appear to be a potentially large issue in the eyes of respondents, which Hassan said was a big part of the reason why he and others were originally shocked by it being displayed at the meeting. 

Landroche said that there are no plans to remove the results from the city website, however, as did Dearborn Mayor Jack O’Reilly. 

“To edit out one piece of information doesn’t make the comments go away,” O’Reilly said. “The issue here is that we have to look at all of them and say what drives this perception, why do people feel that way?” he said, noting that the open-ended responses were from a statistically-invalid random sample. 

“Now we can have a discussion as to what we can do to change that perception and how to educate people on the facts so they understand the contributions that have been made (by Arabs and Muslims in the city).”

Hassan said that he and other Arab American businesspeople informed O’Reilly of their concerns regarding the comments at a meeting last week that focused on business issues. 

O’Reilly said that the city may look into correcting the way the information is presented to include all of the relevant statistics so that it doesn’t look like like a more widespread perception in the city than it actually is according to survey results. He noted that the city also didn’t want to seem as if it was covering the responses up, which it could have been accused of had it decided to pull the information this week. 

“In the end, it’s someone’s opinion and I don’t believe that to deny it or say it shouldn’t exist is an (appropriate) way to deal with this (false perception),” he said.