Did Staff Lie?

An interesting discrepancy was uncovered at this past week's City of Kissimmee Commission meeting. While we understand that the commission feels that it is important to make small insignificant changes to give the appearance that they are doing something, we feel that wasting time on logo changes to try to help Commissioner Art Otero feel patriotic is not helpful to the citizens of our community. While we do not wish to discuss Commissioner Otero's waning patriotism, we do have to wonder, after yesterday's un-news article, if this is a growing trend with newly elected officials? Regardless of these issues, it was during the discussion of possible changes to the city's logo, which sounded more like the nonsensical singing of Nero as Rome burned, price discrepancies were questioned by Commissioner Cheryl Grieb. The WayneWho staff feels that it was this part of the discussion that begs the most attention and possible investigation.

About a year ago, Commissioner Grieb had suggested that the City of Kissimmee hire a design firm to create a new logo that would help to improve the city's marketing efforts. Much like the City of St. Cloud had done, Commissioner Grieb felt that a new logo would help to redefine our community. Her mistake at the time was in suggesting that the city remove the 'Cow' from the logo. The public reacted negatively and the project found itself without much support. The information that killed the project was a report from city staff that it would take $200,000 to change the logo.

Fast forward to present day and now to change the logo to help a commissioner finally feel patriotic, and the amount of money that it will cost to change the logo is around $745.00. WTF? How can the number drop from $200,000.00 to $745.00? Is the economy that bad or did staff mislead the commission a year ago? The excuse from the City Manager is that the price difference is related to the speed at which the commission at that time wanted to change out the new logo. This is not the full truth by any means. If you listen to the tapes of those meetings, time frame of a new marketing deployment was only lightly touched on. When the Commissioners discussed rolling out the new logo changes more slowly, it was staff that directed the discussion towards a hasty deployment. When the numbers came in at over $200,000 dollars staff never said that there were ways cut the expense, or delay the expenditure over time. Quite simply put, staff misled the city commission.

What we find really disturbing is that staff is once again misleading the commission. It will still cost around $200,000 dollars to change out the logo, it is just that it will broken up over time. The WayneWho staff finds it sad that the commission would allow these types of expenditures instead of finding ways to reduce the costs to citizens and the businesses of this community. Raising fire fees on small businesses to pay for logo changes just seems out of touch when the area is in economic turmoil.

Our last points on this issue would be that if the commission is going to follow this misguided path, wouldn't it actually be more intelligent to do what Commissioner Grieb suggested? That is to hire a professional firm to develop the logo and let the public decide what they like? Why is it our city logo has been hijacked by the commission and staff and is being changed without public input? Is this the logo of the city commission or a logo that represents the City of Kissimmee? Maybe something as drastic as a logo change should be directed by professionals working with the public instead of individuals with absolutely no marketing experience, working behind the scenes. Seems like a simple conclusion to reach for us, but we guess we will have to see if the commission wants to involve the public or not.