City Hall TV show faces early cancellation

[Steve]

Mayor's staff says it'll educate many, plans to fight for it.


By Mary Kelli Palka, The Times-Union


The Jacksonville City Council Finance Committee voted Thursday to cancel a new $175,000 City Hall television show, deciding the expense was too much in a tight budget year.

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The decision still needs full council approval, and Mayor John Peyton's staff intends to fight to keep the money for the show, intended to educate citizens on topics from hurricane preparedness to city services to new policies.

One company that stands to benefit if the show's funding is retained is Spectrum Film Video Interactive, which won a $57,000 subjective bid in June to produce the show. Spectrum is partly owned by the brother of mayoral spokeswoman Susie Wiles.

Council members said they were unaware of the link between Spectrum and Wiles.

"We're asking everyone to lean up and cut budgets," Councilman Richard Clark said. "It's not the time for us to branch out into new ventures. We need to stay as conservative as we can."

Councilman Kevin Hyde called the show "a bad idea" and noted that the council initially axed the project last year before anyone had bid on it. Six months later, the council granted approval following heavy lobbying from the Peyton administration.

Public Information Director Susan Pelter, who was to oversee the project, said the city already has cut about $500,000 from public information initiatives over the past two years. She said television is an efficient way to reach people. A city-produced magazine reached 70,000 people while Pelter estimated the TV program could reach 300,000 people.

"We believe that's a good value for taxpayers," she said.

The Peyton administration has recently come under fire for awarding exclusive contracts with two of Peyton's friends. In both cases, the city didn't seek proposals from other companies before giving the work to ProLogic Consulting Inc., owned by former Chief of Staff Scott Teagle, and GreenBean Corporate Organizing Solutions, owned by Sheila Green, who worked on Peyton's first mayoral campaign.

The city did advertise for the television production work.

Wiles said she recused herself from the selection process when she realized the company co-founded by her brother, Kyle Summerall, might compete.

Spectrum spokeswoman Amy Rankin said the company won the job fairly based on its product.

The competition wasn't based on the lowest bid, as is the case for other professional service contracts. The cost of the production was negotiated after Spectrum was selected, although it submitted a lower per-show cost than WJCT, Jacksonville's public TV station.

Instead, the city based its selection on subjective evaluations of three companies: Spectrum, WJCT Inc. and Digital Video Arts.

WJCT ranked first after the bidders submitted written proposals, largely because of its work with small and minority businesses. But Spectrum prevailed during the interviews, which included examples of each company's work. Digital Video Arts ranked third after both rounds.

The selection committee consisted of representatives from Procurement, the General Counsel's Office, Administration and Finance, Public Information and Jacksonville Port Authority spokeswoman Nancy Rubin.

WJCT officials could not be reached for comment late Thursday afternoon.

Spectrum has not yet received any city money because the final contract has not been completed.

But the company has received almost $14,000 in other city work since about 2002, including doing recruiting videos for the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office and Duval County Supervisor of Elections Office, according to city records.

mary.palka@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4104

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/081707/met_192173991.shtml

[Steve]

These guys are unbelieveable.  Do they do anything without a friend being involved

[thelakelander]

These guys are unbelieveable.  Do they do anything without a friend being involved

Apparently not... 

The more and more things come to light, the easier it is to understand why we as a city continue to struggle and complicate simple issues that cities all across the country deal with and have dealt with at some point in the past.  Somewhere in our history we forgot about the importance of accountability, why rules were put in place and educational experience in specific fields.

[copperfiend]

If Jacksonville were New York City, stories like this would be on CNN and NBC.

[Oh my]

The seed were sowed years ago....the Mayor is reaping a bumper crop of cronyism. This goverment runs on who you know. Those that are just the layman citizen get tax increases and poor service. Anyone that knows anyone in the Mayors Office gets fat! It has been and will be all about who you know until the citizens rize up and say enough is enough....impeach him now!

[gatorback]

A college professor once told me that his old college professor told him that , "Americans just want to bowl."  I agree.  Most people just want to go bowling, get fat, and spend money on junk.  Hmm, side note:  Reptiles have been around since before the Permo-Triassic boundary.  Go Gators!