More bang for your buck

Posted

It was highly disappointing to learn that our own Jefferson County Commissioners have chosen to contract with the PDN, rather than the Leader, to print weekly County public notice advertising.

The PDN is published outside Jefferson County, and its primary readership and focus is outside Jefferson County. The Leader is local, and  has three times the readership in Jefferson County as the PDN. Why on earth would the commissioners vote 2-1 to shift county advertising to an outside publisher with far less effective means to give notice to Jefferson County residents?

What’s next, conducting the county’s public notices through the Seattle Times?

The two votes favoring the PDN apparently did so on the basis of it being the “lowest bid” in a competitive bid. This ignores the fact that commissioners could easily have rejected the PDN bid because it was not a “responsible” bid under state/county procurement laws, in that its low readership in Jefferson County would be ineffective to deliver important public notices. Or the commissioners could have exempted this contract from competitive bidding under state laws authorizing sole-source contracting or due to special market conditions. The lowest bid rationale is a fig leaf.

More importantly, it lacks simple business analysis. The real lowest bidin terms of the county’s cost in reaching each Jefferson County readerwas the Leader’s bid, because it has three times more local readers.

Public notice to its citizens by a county should not just be a matter of checking a box that we met publication requirements, albeit weakly. Communication to residents of important county actions is the lifeblood of local democracy, which is important here.

The commissioners should revisit their action and return our county’s advertising to our local paper, which delivers a better bang for the buck.

Jim Brennan
Port Townsend