Unhappy with the scope of the current communication contract for the Winslow Way reconstruction, the City Council wants to renegotiate to provide more direct mitigation support for the downtown business community.

At last week’s meeting, the council voiced its criticism of the already negotiated and approved contract to former business owner Sarah Wen and Winslow resident Michael Read of Seattle communication firm ReadWagoner for their Winslow “Street Smarts” communication plan.

Instead of a contract that pays mostly for labor, the council wants to see a contract giving direct goods and services to the struggling business community that is already strained to pay for marketing costs in a troubled economy – on top of a construction mess outside their front door.

Originally, the Bainbridge Island Downtown Association (BIDA) submitted a budget proposal in the fall to deliver a communication plan for the construction project, and the council set aside $40,000 during the budget process for BIDA to take on that work.

When BIDA merged with the Chamber in February, it decided not to deliver the communication plan.

The council was not involved in either the RFP process or the selection or contract negotiation for the team, according to Councilor Bob Scales. The city manager is authorized to negotiate and approve contracts under a certain threshold.

Wen and Read finished the contract negotiation process and started their Street Smarts campaign in the last couple weeks. The council came across the contract after it was already approved and authorized by city officials.

“The BIDA proposal had specific goods and services like 36 weekly ads with the Review, banners down Winslow Way, special advertising inserts and hand outs. These were tangible deliverables that are marketing efforts to get the community downtown,” said Mayor Kirsten Hytopolous.

“With this new contract there are few real solid goods and services, and instead we will pay mostly for labor and meetings,” she said. “With so little money we do not want to pay a contractor for a job that is mostly staff responsibility.”

Hytopolous said about $13,000 of the contract was set aside solely for meetings.

“There is a history in this community of the city contracting out meeting facilitation and other soft costs and at this point the community has no appetite to pay for that,” said Hytopolous.

The council also took issue with the vision of the contract as negotiated in its current form. The current scope of the Street Smarts campaign is to help businesses help themselves through marketing ideas and self-promotion tips, with some communication outreach, and little to no media advertising.

“Most [businesses] do not have marketing budgets already and they will struggle more with this project,” Hytopolous said. “Council wanted to pool our resources together to directly help communicate and step in the middle to directly communicate with the community on behalf of the businesses, not on behalf of the city.”

City staff did point out to the council that the BIDA proposal was created with the intention that BIDA would use its existing staff resources to complete the work. Without an organization already established another group or entity will accumulate labor costs in order to carry out any communication plan.

Scales said he thought the last thing the city needed was to pay two people to teach or educate the business community on how to communicate with the city or with its customers.

“We don’t need to hire someone to teach the businesses how to fish,” said Scales at last week’s council meeting. “We need to give the businesses fish. We need to feed them.  They are starving.”

The council decided to pause the current contract, not cancel, and renegotiate. City staff was expected to meet with the communication team this week to see if they are willing to work with a new contract more consistent with the original BIDA proposal. City staff will report back to the council next week.