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City hired communications consultant months after former Council refused to fund position

Nov 16, 2018 | 5:05 PM

NANAIMO — Less than three months after the majority of Nanaimo’s previous Council fought to remove a communications director position from the budget, the City hired a consultant to provide the service.

Documents obtained by NanaimoNewsNOW through a freedom of information request showed the City spent more than $18,000 combined in August and September on communications services specifically related to Discontent City.

In-camera meeting minutes showed interim chief administrative officer Jake Rudolph asked Council to approve the consulting work in late July, one week after his first day on the job. The City then signed a contract with Trish Webb, principal of Jericho Strategies, to handle a variety of communication tasks solely on the tent city file.

Rudolph said he quickly diagnosed the City’s “inability to effectively communicate” its attempts to respond to the controversial issue.

“We needed extra horsepower to deal with a very urgent issue which has been the priority issue for my first few months here. Attempting to de-escalate a very difficult, challenging problem that involves a lot of different people and agencies,” Rudolph told NanaimoNewsNOW.

The contract with Webb called for a maximum value of $20,000, but Rudolph said that will likely escalate.

“I’m confident the $20,000 will not cover the required need for her services this year.”

Nanaimo has been without a senior communications employee since Philip Cooper abruptly parted ways with the City in September 2017, a move precipitated by former CAO Tracy Samra.

Samra and then-chief financial officer Victor Mema did not include money to fill Cooper’s position in the preliminary 2018 budget. Councillors quarreled over the matter extensively during budget deliberations, first including funding for a communications director and then removing it at the last minute in April.

Over Cooper’s final full year with the City, 2016, he earned $118,000 as a senior director, meaning the work performed by Webb over two months on one issue equalled nearly 20 per cent of the annual cost of a permanent position.

There are currently two employees in the City’s communications department, listed with job titles of communications and marketing specialist and communications and digital content specialist.

“We needed a skill set of somebody who could step in and look at things from a very strategic communications point of view,” Rudolph said when asked why existing staff couldn’t handle the matter. “(Webb) has the municipal knowledge to be able to step in and work on very complicated situations.”

He said Webb worked to coordinate messaging with BC Housing, wrote news releases, organized information on the City’s website and setup news conferences to manage messaging.

“If you look at the compounding costs for the entire (tent city)…it’s significant and communications is a part of that,” Rudolph said. “But in the scope of how much has been spent, (communications) is a relatively small percentage.”

Rudolph said in his experience cities the size of Nanaimo have a lead or director on communications and it’s something that will be recommended to the new Council when budget talks begin later this month. He described the contracting out method as “expensive.”

Coun. Sheryl Armstrong, who voted against removing the communications director position from the budget in April, said while it made no financial sense to strike down the permanent hire and then bring on a consultant, it became necessary.

“It is so important for the City or whatever agency you’re dealing with to be ahead of the story instead of falling behind it. I found that’s what was happening with tent city,” Armstrong said.

She said the City needs a person with the ability to handle crisis situations beyond regular news releases and social media posts and she will make a motion to add the position to the 2019 budget if someone else doesn’t.

 

dom@nanaimonewsnow.com

On Twitter: @domabassi