Travis County Commissioners Court
August 14, 2007
Item 9
Number 9 is to reject proposal received for r.f.s. Number 170230 jw marketing plan for Travis County parks. Ma'am, if you would like to come forward. Our backup says basically that we ask for somebody with park and marketing experience. Was that the missing component here?
>> yes.
>> and that the one bidding firm did not have any.
>> joe geiselman, transportation and natural resources. We had asked purchasing to put out a request for proposal on park marketing. Basically we're interested in a broad range of ideas on how to get parks better known in our community. And we had, I think, probably 20 different officials that expressed interest in the proposal. But only one actually submitted a proposal. And when we inquired a little more about that, we were basically told that it was so narrowly construed that -- when we asked for park marketing experience, that was the one criteria that most companies were having difficulty coming to qualify on. And so we thought, well, that really is less important to t.n.r. That getting ideas out on how this service and this -- of park service should be marketed. And so we thought perhaps it would be better to go back out and entertain a much broader r.f.q. To get a better pool of applications and better pool of proposals. Marketing itself is, we believe in this town anyway, should be a fairly available service to purchase. And perhaps our r.f.p. When it first went out was too narrowly defined even for our own interests and that's why we asked purchasing to reinject and go back out to enrich the pool and get better ideas on how to market the parks system.
>> we had a specification requiring that you have experience marketing parks. We believe that that requirement kept a whole lot of firms from submitting proposals. The recommendation to the court is to reject the one bid we received, revise our specifications and take another shot at it. Your response to that as the one firm submitting a proposal is what?
>> createive heads advertising. I'm no agreement. I had hoped to hear something similar this morning as opposed to rejecting our bid to perhaps either canceling the r.f.s. And reletting it so there would be a broader pool or simply -- I don't believe you are going to find parks marketing experience, per se, out of Travis County pool of responders. So we were either hoping to gain your support and understanding of our broad and local expertise in marketing specifically government entity services to Travis County's population through marketing ing plan we developed for Austin bergstrom international airport as well as createive created for the new Travis County health district which involved a lot of strategic marketing and communications development for that entity as well. So I'm glad to hear actually that you are considering reletting the bid with a broader -- without requirement of parks experience because I don't think that you are going to find it. And did not find it with this r.f.s.
>> every time we make somebody else happy, I'm happy myself.
>> [laughter]
>> move approval.
>> second.
>> all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. And what's our timetable on that? Within the next 30 days?
>> oh, yes.
>> oh, yes.
>> hear from you soon.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, August 15, 2007, 18:30 AM