Dollars for Cents

Dollars for Cents

GOVERNMENT WATCH by Matt Walsh | Publisher

An inside look at how Sarasota governments conducted the sales tax extension campaign with a budget of only $41,900- a budget that did not include manhours.

Fourteen months ago, in September 2006, six communications directors and public relations managers - one each from Sarasota County, the cities of Sarasota, North Port, Venice, Longboat Key and the Sarasota County School District - began a series of six monthly meetings to map out an information campaign for the renewal of the county's 1% infrastructure surtax.

After deciding on the scope of the campaign, agreeing to reuse the 1997 theme of "Common Cents" and determining such details as how many posters, fliers, street signs and buttons to produce, the group estimated the budget it would need:

$41,900

That's all it would take to "educate" the county's 238,000 voters on a tax that would generate $1.4 billion over 15 years.

The group made another essential decision as well. It determined the campaign's four objectives. In a five-page strategic plan, its objectives would be to:

• "Educate the public about the penny sales tax."

• "Gain public support for the penny sales tax extension."

• "Gain public understanding for a 15-year renewal of the penny sales tax."

• "Support the public confidence that Sarasota County will continue to respond to citizens' needs."

Obviously, the group accomplished its mission. With 66% in favor, Sarasota County voters approved extending the 1% sales surtax.

On Tuesday morning, election day, Larry Allen, a longtime communications and public relations staff member for the county, reflected in a second-floor conference room at the Sarasota County Administration Building on all of the work that went into the county and city governments' campaign.

To him and his half-dozen colleagues in the county's communications department, the campaign was not extraordinary. "In many ways, this is just another project," he says. "We know how to do it."

County Administrator Jim Ley describes it as "dusting off the bike and getting it out of the closet."

"We've done this two other times," Ley says five days before the election. "We basically had the model that we used in '97."

But what may be seen as routine to county and city government officials can be viewed with a different perpsective. The cost of your local governments' educational sales-tax campaign was not just $41,900. If you add up all the direct costs involved from the height of the campaign (September through election day), including personnel time, the total easily is twice what was budgeted.

Hardly a budget buster. Comparatively, the county's annual communications budget is $3.3 million a year. So a $100,000 sales tax campaign still would be only 3% of the total communications budget.

Even so, the extent of the campaign certainly reflected the scope and sophistication of any Sarasota business' efforts to market a new product or service. The details of the sales-tax educational campaign were multitudinous and multifaceted.

As for the educational aspect, state courts have ruled local governments can advocate for or against referenda. But Sarasota County officials have taken the position of trying to be educational and neutral rather than partisan to avoid voter resentment. Yet, while not explicitly telling voters to vote "yes" on the sales tax, the county's campaign clearly conveyed a message that was tilted - in favor of extending the tax.

In effect, Sarasota County taxpayers funded a campaign to urge themselves to continue taxing themselves.

Meticulous campaign

This was a big undertaking. Dave Bullock, deputy county administrator, likens the 1% sales tax efforts to creating a 15-year capital improvement plan. It took a lot of people to put it together.

Once a citizens' committee determined from public meetings potential projects, including those each governmental unit suggested, engineers, architects, planners and others from county, municipal and school district public works departments crafted detailed estimates of each project. They didn't do this by just sitting with a calculator and guessing. Bullock says they estimated sizes of bridges and buildings, square footage, amounts of concrete, steel, wiring - everything. This began more than a year ago.

At the same time, before the Sarasota County Commission even decided to place the surtax renewal on the ballot, County Administrator Jim Ley and Bullock met a half-dozen times with counterparts from the other five jurisdictions for an hour or more each time to refine the final list of projects and discuss how the sales tax money - if approved - should be allocated. Like the project estimates, these meetings carried a cost: the time of each of these administrators. If you figure the hourly rate of pay at roughly $85 an hour, including benefits, that cost approaches $1,000 for an hour-long meeting.

And while the top administrators were meeting, engineering and design managers and the communications directors from each jurisdiction met just as often to address sales-tax issues in their respective arenas. These, too, are costs that could be associated with the sales-tax campaign but don't show up in the $41,900 budget.

The media-communications end of the campaign fell largely in the hands of Crystal Pruitt, Sarasota County's communications manager. Her counterparts in the other jurisdictions agreed she would serve as the communications commander and the county government as the central hub. Pruitt had the staff and many of the collateral pieces used in the 1997 campaign. Pruitt's direct staff consisted of an Access 19 staffer, a Web master, two staffers to write, proof and edit collateral material, a graphic designer and herself.

Once the County Commission voted in late August to put the sales tax on the November ballot, Pruitt says, she spent 60% of her week managing and executing the sales-tax media campaign; she is paid about $60,000 a year in salary. Pruitt says her team spent a few hours a day on the campaign. Bullock says Pruitt was the one who "lived and breathed" the sales tax.

Pruitt and her staff modified the design on street signs the county erects when it works on public projects. She says her crew simply added the words "Vote Nov. 6" to the design and asked the county printer to roll out 50 signs. The county's public works crew then made a list of possible locations, approved by Pruitt and a public works manager, and drove the county to erect the signs.

Pruitt's crew researched and gathered the facts to write the copy and design posters, brochures, buttons, fliers, fact sheets, postcards, bookmarks, newspaper ads, newsletters and an insert for utility bills.

Pruitt wrote and sent out weekly news releases and e-mail messages that went to 2,600 county employees and the communications department's list of about 300 recipients, hundreds of them heads of organizations, who in turn forwarded the messages to their members - viral marketing at its best.

An Access 19 crew member spent nearly a week going on site to video 10 people who agreed to speak on behalf of the sales tax in public service announcement videos. It took almost another week to edit the videos for airing. Typically, another county employee would go along on the video shoots to take a still photo of the subject - a 45-minute job. The photos became part of the county's integrated Web site campaign.

The Web site was crucial. One of Pruitt's in-house staffers managed the uploading of all information and Web links. He posted the video PSAs and programmed rotating, flash messages to give the site more video appeal. The videos also were submitted to YouTube. This was in addition to uploading more than 170 pages of documents listing the projects on which the $1.4 billion would be spent.

The entire campaign was so meticulously organized it included a detailed implementation schedule set up in three phases, with each task assigned a completion date (see box).

Education or advocacy?

Ask any voter. If he read or heard any of the county's educational materials, he'd say the underlying message was clear - to persuade you to vote in favor of the tax. Even if the county's literature and signs did not say "Vote Yes" - those were the signs of a political action committee - taxpayers thought they did. One taxpayer chastised Commissioner Nora Patterson for one of the PAC's street signs posted at the entrance to Palm Island.

"As I headed onto Palm Island today," wrote Judy Jones, "I was accosted by a huge sign in our landscaped entry touting the penny tax paying for our bridge and requesting a yes vote again."

When an e-mail message signed by Jim Ley went to county employees, he wrote: "Extending the penny sales tax, which has been in place for 18 years, is essential for the county, municipalities and the School Board to have the revenue needed to build the roads, parks, libraries, fire stations, schools and many other things citizens have said they want to improve their community."

While Ley didn't advocate a yes, the subliminal message was obvious: If you vote no we won't have the revenues needed to improve the community.

Ley went on to list five advantages of having the tax. He listed no disadvantages.

Consider this: "For two decades," said a county flier, "the penny has improved the quality of life for everyone. Now you have a choice on Nov. 6 to keep the penny in play for our future." Educational or advocacy?

Allen, the longtime county communications staffer, says county officials take seriously the line between educating and advocating. He says multiple staffers reviewed all of the informational material and signage "so it doesn't ever have tinges of advocacy. We are very far away from the line of advocacy."

Four days before the election, Pruitt sent out one of her last e-messages on the sales tax. The first sentence said: "Be sure to vote Nov. 6 to renew the Sarasota County 1% sales tax."

CAMPAIGN ANATOMY

Implementation Schedule

Sept. 3-Sept. 14

• Print, post surtax project book online

• Distribute video

• Print, distribute brochure

• Broadcast PSAs on Access 19

• Develop speakers bureau

• Tape county talk

• Send news release

• Develop fact sheet

• Develop BCC talking points

Sept. 17-Sept. 28

• Earth Tones newsletter

• The Works newsletter

• Planning services newsletter

•Community Spirit newsletter

• E-Message from Jim Ley

• Bookmarks

Oct. 1-Nov. 2

• Channel 7 noon show

• Insider message

• E-message from Jim Ley

• SoundBites

• County page ad

• Newspaper ads

• Guest column

• Road project signs

• Post cards

• Utility insert

• WMNF radio interview

DIRECT CAMPAIGN COSTS

Newspaper ads Cost Qty.

Herald Tribune $6,624 6

Sun News $1,908 4

Tempo $918 2

Total $9,450 12

Promotional Materials

Common Cents signs $12,150 54

Quick Screen posters $3,239 25

Reading Fest. banners $1,796 6

Penny buttons $493 1,500

Total $17,678

Printing

Utility insert $4,000 60,000

Common Centers fliers $2,500 12,500

Postcards $880 8,000

Common Cents DVD $648 -

Library bookmarks $525 10,000

Reading Fest. bookmarks $525 10,000

Speaking points cards $19 125

Common Cents map $110 250

Total $9,208

Postage

Absentee Ballot p-cards $4,211 10,472

Postcard labels $444 -

Total $4,655 10,472

Grand total $40,992

Source: Sarasota County

IS THIS ADVOCACY?

The Sarasota County Communications Department sent out this e-mail message Nov. 2. Note how it tells voters how to vote:

"Remember to Vote Nov. 6

"Be sure to vote Nov. 6 to renew the Sarasota County 1% sales tax. It's an important public investment in the quality of our roads, parks, libraries, school rooms, as well as many other badly needed projects.

"In a video called "Your Penny in Neighborhoods," a Sarasota County resident talks about penny sales tax and why it's important to her and her family. To watch the video, Click here. ...

"The penny surtax benefits everyone!"