HANSON – The Select Board on Tuesday, Jan. 14, voted 4-0 after nearly an hour of discussion, to use Guilfoil Public Relations to assist them in presenting the case for an override in the run-up to the annual Town Meeting and Town Election in May. Member Joe Weeks was absent from the meeting
Guilfoil, already on a retainer of unused hours under which had initially been hired with ARPA money, to help the board deal with an election-related issue at the town’s water tower in October, had presented a media plan, including guest editorials to the Express and website information on the potential financial effects to the town if an override failed.
Select Board member Ed Heal balked at the whole idea, before finally voting on the proposal, because of concerns about cost and ownership of the site, how much of the work the board might be expected to do and whether it might come cross as an attempt to “sell” the public on supporting an override.
“When you say ‘educate the community,’ I think there’s probably going to be people out there who are going to say, ‘You’re not educating us, you’re trying to sell us,’” George said.
Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett said the intent is that the board is fulfilling its job responsibilities of fully informing the public.
“We’re not trying to sell anybody,” she said. “It’s just the facts. … I would say ‘inform’ is a better term [than educate].”
Concerns aired
All four members present had some initial concerns on one point or another, but were swayed by the closing window for getting information before the public.
“I’m looking for the value in it, and I’m not seeing the value in what they are providing,” Heal said at the outset. “We’re still providing the data and information to them. They’re just going to host it.”
“They are going to work with us,” Town Administrator Lisa Green said, noting that her office had approached John Guilfoil Public Relations Agency and said they would be working with the town on press releases, the website posts, fliers and mailers, slide show presentations and guest columns for the Express.
“They were very good with helping us respond to inquiries and things like that,” Green said about the water tower issue. “With the hours that they gave us for that proposal, we only used about seven hours out of 36 [contracted for]. We still have 29 hours, which they [can use] to help us with communication of budget education and override education for our residents and the public.”
Green also pointed out that, at mid-January, time is not on the board’s side for getting information before the public to be of use for a May Town Meeting and Town Election and that, if not used, the ARPA funds would be lost. She had already spoken to department heads to have them start getting information to Guilfoil.
“We are working as quickly as we possibly can to start getting this information to them,” she said. “There’s a lot of moving pieces on this.”
She said their proposal includes creating a website for the town that will present all information regarding the budgets the budget process, an override and that process, look at town departments to provide “as much information as we can get out there” on town finances, services it provides to residents, to potential effects if an override fails.
“Their proposal was very, very reasonable,” Green said. “We will be using ARPA money to pay for this. They [will] keep the website up to date …”
“Can we talk about funding?” asked FitzGerald-Kemmett. “Where is the money coming from for this? We are in fiscal crisis and we’re heading into an even bigger fiscal crisis.”
Green said the town had ARPA money that had already been paid for the October crisis communications services and the remaining contracted hours will be used toward the budget education services.
“In other words, we bought a package of hours and we didn’t use them all up,” said member Ann Rein.
The $9,000 in ARPA funds would now be used toward the website design, Green explained.
“We have a year’s worth of service on this and the website is ours always,” she said. “I believe they’ll make a link to it so that people can go on our website and click on the link and come right to this website that will have calculators, questions, answers, it will have budget information for each department …”
Website
FitzGerald-Kemmett asked if it would be similar to the one that South Shore Technical High School has for their project, which is like a micro-site devoted to the building project.
“Which I really love, because it I don’t want to read about everything else related to [SST] I don’t need to,” she said. “I can just go to this thing to read about the SST article and everything I want to know is right on that link. … It’s been very thoughtfully put together.”
Green said Guilfoil has done the same type of project for other towns and school districts, noting that they are professionals who know how to word things.
“And they understand that we’re not advocating…” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
“It’s the facts only,” Green said. “It’s going to be beneficial because we’ve never had something like this before. We haven’t had an IT director, so having somebody with this knowledge build [the site] and, once we do get our IT director on board, they can help build it, as well.”
Earlier in the meeting the Select Board had voted to approve the hiring of Steve Burke as IT director on the recommendation of Green and Planning Board Chair Joseph Campbell (who has extensive professional experience in IT and helped with the interview process).
“But for now, we have these folks on board and they can start the process,” she said.. “We’re going to start feeding them the information – the budget process, and things like that.”
“If it’s ours afterward, I would truly love to use it prospectively, for future town meetings, to help with all the information that people need for Town Meeting on that one site,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
Rein said the town is paying the monthly fee after the first year of the website for domain registration.
“We’re going to own that, all we have to do is host it,” she said.
Heal said he had asked the same questions FitzGerald-Kemmett was posing and made notes on the proposal sheet and hadn’t received answers.
“Basically, we get the first year for free,” Green said of a budge webpage. “There’s no charge for the first year of hosting and supporting a website. After that, it’s $199 a month that we put into the technology line, but they will continue to host the site, software updates, nightly backup .. 24/7/365 support.’
He countered that, while the town owns the domain, and as long as the town pays Guilfoil, they will keep the site up and the town’s URLs will work.
“The minute we stop paying them, our URL that somebody gave somebody else is gone and we can’t get it back,” Heal said. “We can’t take it in-house. The domain is not the data.”
Rein said she would want the details looked over with respect that the town would have the ability to take the site over.
“This does not allow that,” he said.
“We could negotiate it, is my point,” Rein replied. “We can’t afford $200 a month. … It would be nice to know that we have that option to buy our stuff outright.”
“We could make it more sustainable for us to take the wheel,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
FitzGerald-Kemmett said it wasn’t a deal-breaker, but that the board would feel “a lot more encouraged about it” if they were able to get some assurances that Guilfoil would be good partners and give the town the wheel at some point.
“For at least one year, they’ll get us through, the information we need to get out there,” Green said.
But Heal’s objection was that Hanson would be providing the data and words to Guilfoil.
“They’re not massaging our words,” he said. “They’re basically putting them up on the site. Correct?”
Seeking value
Green said that was, indeed, correct, but if Guilfoil decided a submission could be worded better, they will put their PR skills to work. She said she would ask the firm for the specifics Heal and George were seeking.
Heal agreed on that point, but said he was “looking for the value in it.”
“They need to clear it up,” George suggested.
“The reason you hire a PR firm is to do this kind of work,” Rein said. “I don’t think there’s anything nefarious here. I think we’re getting what, at least we understood what we’re going to get.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett said that, when she spoke to them, Guilfoil staff said that is what they said they would be doing.
“They’re going to be managing the communication project, which we do not have the staff to do,” she said, including suggested website postings and press releases.
“I would feel comfortable if Steve Burke feels comfortable with this,” Heal said of the data management plans. FitzGerald-Kemmett said she would like to hear his thinking on sustainability and cost.