Travis County Commissioners Court
April 10, 2007
Item 9
Number 9, approve sole source exemption and contract award with Austin american statesman for newspaper advertising services.
>> judge, I just basically wanted to ask a question and maybe get a brought--a breakdown. What my question was when I saw this, I wanted to make sure that, I foe the american statesman is the largest paper that we have here in town, surrounding area, and we have, what, 124 961 that we spend in advertising money. However, there are other persons that we use for advertising purposes, whether dealing with business aspect and other things, elections and other things that we look at. I just wanted to know if we could disclose that information also as far as the other vendors that we use outside the american statesman. All those departments that use advertisement sources, to maybe disclose that to see how and what Travis County is really doing as far as painting a broad brush as far as the usage of advertising money other than just american statesman. Could you maybe help me out.
>> yes, sir, let me see if I can give some background on this. Cyd grimes, account purchasing agent. It's probably been around ten years ago that I remember having to put an ad if had the Austin american statesman for the tax office and about $25,000 for one day for one ad. I remember having a budget crunch that year and needing police cars, and I remember thinking how much money, my budget at that time was $350 000 on advertising. So I sort of challenged the way we had been doing things and we look at the Austin chronicle. They are a free paper, only a weekly, but two-thirds cheaper than the statesman. We also did a survey in our office to see how people were finding out about our solicitations and only about one percent was actually reading the newspaper. Now with our e procurement systems where we can e-mail stuff out and the whole world knows what is going on we are using more of that technology to advertise. But we challenged ourselves and started using the chronicle to advertise my solicitations. There's a whole lot of other public notices that are required by law, and some of those have to two in a newspaper of a general circulation and a lot of those are going into the staintman. So we still are doing business with the statesman and they are still a source, the only daily newspaper of large circulation which meets the legal requirement, and we spend about $285,000 last year on advertising, about 144 of that with the statesman, about 137 of that with the chronicle. And we did as part of our hub effort, will you recall many years ago, decide that we would rotate in some of the minority newspapers. And where we are at today, if you look on the last page of the notice I gave you, this particular advertise advertisement just basically says Travis County wants to do business with you you, it gives our phone number, facts number, website, and also channel 17. So what we are doing with the hub papers, and I have them listed on the front of that, right now, el m mundo and the cadet, we did work with other in the past but not recently. They have not invoiced us. So this is the amount of money that we are spending through my office, $176,000, which means another 109,000 was spent by some of the other departments. I have a central line item for advertising but it is not the only advertising line item out there. Some departments have different ads that they put in the papers and they have money. But this is the amount that we spent with the chronicle and the statesman last year and the smaller newspapers. And as you can see with the minority newspapers, it's well under $1,000 a year that we are spending with them, about you we are putting that ad mtheir newspaper monthly, and that's how we have been doing our advertising for many years now.
>> I guess I want to just maybe give, bring it up, because I don't want it being perceived that the american statesman, with this amount of money that I just mentioned, is the only business we do business with with. From my request, and I talk with pbo about this as far as the line items and other departments that actually use money to advertise, from my request, I'm going to request pbo to give me some information on other departments that use dollars in their line items to see who exactly uses that advertising money. It doesn't have to be dis disclosed today but I think it's something that is important.
>> my numbers are in '06, this is being last fiscal year, we spent $285,742 with various newspapersrb the bulk going to the statesman and Austin chronicle. There may be different numbers.
>> definitely, Commissioner, when you called yesterday we went ahead and ran a report from ht e on the advertising line item and came up with several departments that have advertising budget. Then we went in and looked at po's that have been issu issued this year to see who had advertised. We have tax assessor, human resources, theirs are very much aimed at a lot of recruiting publications, those kinds of things. Tnr, hss for their different advertising needs. I have a little spreadsheet here that just shows the different vendors that they have used to date this year but not dollar figures.
>> I understand. But if I can have that information just for my reference. I want to hold on to that.
>> one thing I would add, some of our election advertising, we do get some reimbursement from those entities for advertising.
>> do we have any policies as far as the other departments go? I'm assuming that a certain percentage of these other departments are required to put their advertisement in a daily of regional circulation, so the so american stateman is their only option. Do we have any idea of where we have wiggle room is this would it be fruitful to get with the department and see where we have wiggle room and encourage the use of other outlets that are more economical? Or have we already con that ?
>> --done that ?
>> we have done that. We encourage the chronicle, unless it's something that they feel they want in the statesman, and we defer to them.
>> as far as what we heard this morning, I have heard several times in public hearing, I mean, I have been here a little bit. The amount of public hearings that we have had, I've heard it several, several times, that folks have not been notified one way or another. We heard it again this morning, noted. Part of the advertising business is public notice. So I don't know how it's happening that the word, appears that it's not getting out to everybody. Just raised a flag with me when e saw this and then tie it in with the public hearing that we had this morning as far as notice and other public hearings that we have had before this court.
>> rightwe will we--
>> right.
>> we will have several folks that say, we didn't hear anything about this.
>> right.
>> I am concerned that the word get out, according to what I'm hearing. That was one concern with item 9. I have no problem with it. I want to be sure that folks are knowing about the public hearings here in Travis County.
>> I think in Travis County, I think the Austin american statesman daily circulation is in excess of 185,000 people. Of course, there's about 820 000 people in the community. So a very small fraction are looking at the newspaper. For the item this morning, we might focus on like the tax office does, on the area codes for certain public hearings. That's a whole other issue for someone else.
>> okay.
>> discussion? All in favor. That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you all very much.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, April 11, 2007, 8:34 AM