A day before a contractor installed the city’s first electronic parking kiosk in front of a popular Tacoma pub late last month, news media across the region received an e-mail blast heralding the event.
“Big happenings tomorrow – first parking pay station to be installed downtown,” the subject line read.
But the news was hardly, well, new. Tacoma’s move toward paid parking – covered periodically in print and online over the past two years – has garnered news stories, blog posts and other local coverage detailing the coming installation of some 200 pay stations and the official date they’ll go live (Sept. 20).
Still, the e-mail achieved its purpose – triggering more publicity in a variety of TV, online and print media, including a photograph on the South Sound page of The News Tribune.
“Really, it’s an awareness campaign at this point,” Debra Carnes, the senior adviser at JayRay Communications responsible for the e-mail, said a few days later.
“The focus really has been, ‘No surprises,’” she added. “Come September 20th, we don’t want people to say, ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this?’”
To accomplish that, City Manager Eric Anderson – on recommendation of a citizens’ task force largely made up of downtown merchants – approved in June a $50,000 contract, plus expenses, to JayRay to conduct a public relations campaign through October. The contract costs, paid for as part of a $2 million bond issue for parking approved last year, will eventually be recouped from parking revenues, city officials have said.
Among other things, the 17-page contract tasks the Tacoma-based PR firm with producing “an award winning communications plan” that will “give the (parking) program a friendly face for customers.”
BUDGET CRUNCH
JayRay’s hiring comes at a time when the city, facing a major budget crunch, employs more than two dozen public relations specialists on city general government and utilities payrolls, not including marketing staffs for the Tacoma Dome or the convention center.
The employees include community relations managers to entry-level support aides. Collectively, they garnered more than $1.7 million in pay in 2009, with compensation for seven of them topping the $81,862 salary of then-Mayor Bill Baarsma.
Asked if hiring an outside firm to do PR work for the parking initiative was necessary, Anderson responded: “I was always of that opinion – that this (project) needed a public relations component.”
He added city employees who have community relations expertise are fully occupied with other work.
“(They’ve) only got 40 hours in the work week,” Anderson said. “And it’s a significant amount of time that’s going into this (campaign).”
Rob McNair-Huff, who manages the city’s community and media relations division, noted most of the city’s PR specialists – at least 18 by The News Tribune’s count – are paid for from utility funds. State law restricts such employees from working on general government issues, he added.
“These are restricted employees who can’t work on anything outside of utilities under the law,” he said.
Of the remaining eight city employees with PR experience who are paid from general funds, four are specifically assigned to work for the police and fire departments and the library. That leaves just four positions – one of which has been vacant since last year – to handle all remaining general government community relations work, he said.
One of those employees is assigned to the Downtown Parking Advisory Task Force, but Anderson said given her other responsibilities, that employee isn’t able to conduct such a widespread PR campaign.
“The work JayRay is doing – concepts, messages, marketing – that’s above what we’re able to provide,” he said. “I made the conclusion that it would be better to go outside.”
TASK FORCE
Made up of 12 citizens affiliated with downtown businesses or merchant groups, the parking task force that recommended JayRay has volunteered much time and effort to ensure the city’s new parking system is implemented effectively.
Steph Farber, longtime owner of LeRoy Jewelers and one of the panel’s three co-chairs, said the group considers public outreach critical to relaying three key messages:
That all parking fees and fines are going back into the city’s parking program and not into the general fund; that the system is “customer friendly” and easy to use; and that the purpose of charging for parking is meant to benefit visitors to downtown by creating parking availability.
“It really has not been a city government-run process. It’s been community developed,” Farber added. “So, we felt that in explaining that, we needed to do so in a way that also wasn’t a city government-driven manner.”
The panel recommended the contract with JayRay over a cheaper proposal from Rusty George Consulting, which estimated total costs at less than $21,000.
The project’s scope “changed considerably from the time that this proposal was submitted to the task force,” said McNair-Huff, whose wife, a downtown businesswoman, was among those on the advisory panel.
“What we expressed to the city manager was this was an important story to be told and we wanted it to be told right,” Farber added. “… He agreed with us this (public outreach) was an important part of it, and he believed the best way to do that was through the private sector.”
Anderson ultimately approved the JayRay contract without City Council authorization, as its costs came in below the city’s $200,000 threshold that would trigger a formal competitive bidding process and council review.
NO COUNCIL REVIEW
While unfamiliar with the specifics of the JayRay contract, City Councilman Ryan Mello said even the smallest of contracts calls for scrutiny.
“In tough economic times, people want us to figure out whether these kinds of expenditures are really necessary,” Mello said. “Before we have to lay people off or cut services, we have to get rid of what average people think is discretionary spending.”
While not typical, the city has sought outside PR work for other special projects, McNair-Huff said. That includes contracts for about $104,500 in 2005 and $125,000 in 2008 for separate campaigns marketing the city to developers and investors.
Officials in other governments, including Bellevue and Spokane, say they’ve also occasionally hired private PR firms for special projects.
“Outside contracts with communications firms are, to my knowledge, uncommon, but there have been a couple of small ones I know of in my five or so years with the city,” Bellevue city spokesman Tim Waters said. “Both have been for special initiatives.”
Pierce County, meanwhile, has sought to minimize outside PR work in the last two years, said Deputy Executive Kevin Phelps. During that time, the county paid $1,500, plus sponsorship considerations, to BCRA for marketing materials for the recent U.S. Amateur Golf Championships at Chambers Bay.
“That is the only PR firm that has been used from my research,” Phelps said.
MANY MEDIA
JayRay’s work on the Tacoma parking campaign has included setting up Twitter and Facebook accounts, providing local merchants with information resources and working with the University of Washington Tacoma to spread the word about paid parking to students returning for fall classes, Carnes said.
The city, meanwhile, has continued to operate and pay for some of its own public outreach, including sending postcards to some 3,100 addresses downtown to notify people of the parking changes. Print and postage costs for the mailer amounted to about $1,500, a city spokeswoman said.
“Tacoma is unique in that other communities that have installed (pay stations) really haven’t had a public outreach component,” said Carnes, citing Seattle and Portland as examples. “The city and community really want people to understand why they’re doing it and that there’s a solid rationale behind it.”
Lewis Kamb: 253-597-8542 lewis.kamb@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/politics
Article corrected that a photo of a downtown parking pay station ran in the South Sound section. Also the full annual salary for Pierce County communications director Hunter George was $106,743 in 2009. It was omitted from an information box.
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