I like Jennie Green.
Oh, but not the way you’re thinking. I mean I like the way Jennie handles her role as the sole paid staff for the Pagosa Springs Town Tourism Committee. Jennie works part-time for the all-volunteer TTC board, on a one-year contract, and handles a myriad of different duties, including (but not limited to) keeping the media informed about TTC meetings and events, and updating the public as exciting news about the local tourism market unfolds.
Jennie and I got involved in a brief email exchange about two weeks ago, during the writing of my previous article series, “Portrait of Pagosa as a Glossy Magazine.” As the coordinator for the TTC — the board of volunteer business people who spend about $350,000 of our taxpayer dollars each year, and who had contracted with Pagosa Springs SUN Publishing, Inc. to create the 2009 Summer and Winter “Official Visitors Guides” — Jennie is the normal point of contact for news reporters who want accurate information about the TTC and about Pagosa Springs tourism.
Sadly, even Jennie is unable to get accurate information, sometimes.
 Our email exchange two weeks ago started off discussing about how the 50,000 copies of the 2009 Summer Guide were distributed — and paid for. Jennie noted (and I reported in my article) that only about 14,125 of the 50,000 Summer Guides were mailed out to potential tourists.
Jennie was not able to tell me exactly what happened to the other 36,000 copies.
“Now, with all that said,” Jennie wrote in her email, “we absolutely want to get these guides in as many hands as possible — and ideally when they are deciding where to vacation, versus already in town. If you have ideas for additional distribution, please let me know. I’m always open to new ideas! As I mentioned earlier, I also personally take a few copies with me when I fly and leave in the seat pockets.
”Lastly, we are discussing 2010 visitor guides during the December 15th TTC Board meeting. The conversation might be of interest to you…”
“Might be of interest?” That was an understatement. Jennie actually has a knack for understatements; that’s one of the things I like about her.
What I didn’t know at the time of our email exchange was that the total cost to the TTC of the mail distribution — plus the glossy copies distributed locally to folks who were already vacationing here — had run approximately $45,000, taking the postage into account. That’s about 13 percent of the TTC’s budget.
If we add to that cost the $80,000 the TTC pays annually to the Pagosa Springs Chamber of Commerce — the folks who do the actual physical work of packaging and mailing those glossy magazines — then we might see that the local tax burden applied to distributing these expensive guides runs closer to $100,000.
A few short years ago, before the TTC got so rich off local taxes, the Chamber of Commerce used to mail fulfillment packages at its own expense.
The amount that our local business community invested in the 2009 Summer Guide is, unfortunately, not public information, because the 2009 Summer Guide was a government funded project almost completely under the control of the Pagosa Springs SUN Publishing Inc. I am estimating (based on only minimal information) that the 2009 Summer Guide drained about $80,000 out of the budgets of our struggling local businesses, and sent most of that money off to some unnamed glossy magazine printer in some faraway town.
That 2009 Summer Guide had not been put out to bid by the TTC and the Town of Pagosa Springs — but rather had been contracted to the Pagosa Springs SUN without any competitive bidding being allowed.
In my email responses to Jennie, I suggested that there were numerous ways to make the upcoming 2010 Summer Guide less expensive — for both the TTC, and for our local businesses.
Like, for example, putting the 2010 project out to a “Formal Bidding Process” as required by Ordinance 743, passed in February 2009 as an amendment to the Town of Pagosa Springs Municipal Code. As I understand it, a bidding process tends to produce lower prices, greater efficiency, and a wider range of options. And it’s just simply more fair.
Or like, for example, putting out one, single year-round Visitors Guide covering both Summer and Winter — since ideally, we want every potential tourist to know everything that is available in Pagosa Springs, year round — even if, right at the moment, they are thinking only about the month of July.
One single, year-round guide would save the TTC and our local advertisers thousands of dollars.
But of course, it would mean less profit for Pagosa Springs SUN Publishing, Inc. The SUN likely makes a lot more money by publishing two separate guides — Summer and Winter — that each tell only half the story.
It appears that the TTC’s main concern is not, in fact, to serve the local business community but rather to provide the SUN with maximum profits, as we will find out.
Jennie responded to my suggestions, regarding ways to save the TTC and the local businesses money but still produce, essentially, the same marketing product.
“While I share many of your concerns, as does the TTC, we are making as many improvements as we can, given our pre-determined budgets each year. I would encourage you to attend the December 15th meeting, as the visitor guide will be discussed at length. I expect the board to vote during that meeting on how to handle this expenditure next year. However, I assure the board will be well-informed of procurement procedures.
”As far as one unified visitor guide, versus summer and winter, there have been many discussions. However, at this point, it has not been determined if this is truly the best, or most pragmatic approach. While there are many benefits (which you outlined), there are quite a few negatives to the unified approach as well. As I mentioned earlier today, we will continue to move forward. We are not headed backwards.”
Hopefully, our Daily Post readers will be able to assess for themselves whether the TTC is indeed headed backwards or forwards, once they hear the rest of the story.
Jennie continued her comments.
“I would credit the increase in fulfillment requests largely to a change in advertising. The current website needs work, and we will be issuing an RFP in the coming week to address upgrades that the TTC has prioritized.
”And lastly, your numbers are accurate [regarding the low percentage of guides actually mailed out.] We would like to see a greater percentage of guides leveraged to ‘sell’ potential tourists to visit Pagosa versus being provided to them once they arrive in town.”
Jennie is here referring to the fact that the lion’s share of the TTC’s $350,000 annual budget is spent on advertising — and it is that advertising, not the quality of the actual glossy publication, the led to the Chamber receive requests for 14,000 copies of the 2009 Summer Guide.
Recognizing that close to 80 percent of travelers are making their travel plans via the Internet, the TTC has lately shifted more of its marketing dollars toward web advertising.
As Jennie notes, the TTC’s current website “needs work.” That $40,000 website is only minimally effective and not terribly coordinated with the TTC’s other marketing efforts, from what I can from my occasional visits to the site. (For purposes of comparison, the Pagosa Daily Post website cost me less than $3,000 in programming and design costs.)
Unfortunately, the TTC did not hire any of numerous local website programmers to build their website, and the company that was hired to build the site used a somewhat esoteric programming language — with which, as far as I know, none of our local programmers are familiar.
“I can tell you as long as I am working with the TTC, I will strive to improve upon what we have — and encourage the Board to so as well. While we will never reach perfection, we will continue to aim for a better future,” Jennie wrote.
When I attended the December 15 meeting, to participate in the TTC discussions about the 2010 Summer Guide bidding process, that “better future” seemed to be terribly remote. But that certainly was no fault of Jennie’s.
Read Part Two... |