Monday, April 13, 2009

Communications? or Plain PR

I've only been a Commissioner for a little over 3 months now, and I am still learning something new everyday - not all of which is good.

In reading this week's Boise Weekly, I find that ACHD is twittering not only updates on traffic (good) but biopics of certain commissioners (? really?). Now I have discerned from the beginning that public relations is topmost on ACHD's mind (yes it's a collective mind - think Borg) but I never thought that taxpayer dollars would be spent on twittering biopics.

Nary a commission decision goes by that the public relations aspect is not commented upon. The "communications" staff manager is a member of the "executive" team which makes the important decisions for the agency prior to coming to the commission. The budget for "communications" is almost $700,000.00 with a staff of 7. The wages alone of the 7 member "communications" staff are $387,340.00, amounting to over $50,000.00 per person and you know that the receptionist does not get this amount.

Now let's be honest here. No "communicator" has ever filled a pothole, let and administered a construction bid, inspected a project for safety and strength, planned a new road or designed a bridge. But in today's ACHD, they are responsible for telling the public such good things about the commissioners, things quite frankly, that are unimportant or things the commissioners could tell about themselves.

We're in hard times in this Country, this State and this County. If anything good comes out of it, perhaps we can start putting taxdollars into areas that benefit the public in a concrete way and not just puff up public officials.

2 Comments:

At April 13, 2009 at 6:30 PM , Blogger Eric said...

amen

 
At April 18, 2009 at 10:06 AM , Blogger Lorenzo said...

7 person P.R. Department? They must be planning to do bad in advance.

If the ACHD Kingdom would truly co-operate with cities and counties they would not fear being abolished and certainly could do with a single P.R. person.

 

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