Paso Robles is Paying $57,400 for Marketing Services? What a Bargain!

Call me "hyper-sensitive" to the subject of government agencies using taxpayer money to produce marketing material aimed at swaying those taxpayers' opinion, but...

Over on the excellent blog, UncoveredSLO.com, reporter, Dan Blackburn, has posted a story on how Paso Robles officials have recently approved a $57,400 contract for public relations services with a Los Osos based marketing firm, 2PointMedia.

The contract calls for the firm to "educate" Paso Robles residents on the $202 million Nacimiento Pipeline project over the next year.

According to Blackburn, the marketing campaign, "will take the rest of this year to make Paso Robles residents feel good about absorbing a three-fold water rate increase; underwriting a big, new, chronically expensive water conveyance project; and subsidizing a dependable future water supply allowing huge winery operations, now dramatically over-drafting the area’s water supply, to prosper."

Funny.

But here's what I REALLY find funny about 2PointMedia's contract: It's only for $57,400!... for a whole year's worth of "education."

Either 2PointMedia is getting ripped off, or the 2003 Los Osos CSD was ROBBED BLIND when they spent over $500,000 for just a few "Spiffy quarterly publications called Bear Pride on heavy stock paper filled with graphics and color," according to a 2003, Tribune editorial.

About a year ago, I wrote a blog piece here where I show how everything "Los Osos" is the result of marketing professional, Pandora Nash-Karner's "behavior based marketing" techniques in that town over the past 17 years, since 1991.

In that epic story, I list all of the marketing "strategies" that Nash-Karner has unleashed on the citizens of Los Osos for nearly two decades, now.

Here's where it gets very interesting in connection with Blackburn's piece.

One-of-the-many Nash-Karner "strategies" that I report on in that story involves using public funds to develop marketing material aimed at influencing opinion involving a highly controversial public works project -- the mid-town, Tri-W "sewer-park," that Nash-Karner, as a county Parks Commissioner, developed when she was an elected CSD Director. (In case you don't already know -- Nash-Karner's marketing efforts formed the LOCSD in 1998 and made her the #1 vote-getter on the initial board.)

I've copied-and-pasted the following from, She is Los Osos, Part II... so interesting:

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• A strategy in 2002 to keep her (Nash-Karner's) fingers on the strings of Los Osos voters, using their money, by placing a $700,000 bid for public relations services to the LOCSD shortly after leaving office, serving just one term as a CSD Director, during which time she burned through three sewer projects (the county's viable project, her non-viable Community Plan, and her second Tri-W project, that was also never going to work, by the way.) Although her bid was accepted by the District, she did not get the contract.
  
  However, her strategy may still have worked there, because, apparently, that's not where the expensive public relations contract story ends.
  
  I recently did a little research on that contract because it deals specifically with the subject at hand -- Pandora Nash-Karner, and the marketing of the Los Osos sewer project -- and, well wha-da-ya know? Something stinks about that contract.
  
  That fat contract was eventually awarded to someone named Maria Singleton, to the tune of almost $520,000.
  
  According to a Tribune report at the time, "the contract also calls for her writers and other assistants to be paid at separate rates ranging from $30 an hour to $80 an hour."
  
  Here's the problem I'm having, I can't seem to track down Maria Singleton to ask her if Pandora Nash-Karner was ever one of those "writers" and/or "other assistants."
  
  Call it a journalistic hunch, but I've got $100 bucks that says she was.
  
  I looked Singleton up in the phone book, and although there's a Maria Singleton listed, when I called the number, I got a message machine, and the name left on that machine is not Maria Singleton's. Furthermore, according to the Trib, her company's name is Singleton & Associates, out of San Luis Obispo. Not only is there no listing for that company in the phone book's Yellow Pages (that I could find) or business section, but even a Google search for -- "Singleton & Associates" obispo -- doesn't return any information on her company at all, other than the same link I supply above -- that great case-environmental.org link.
  
  Poof. Gone. Three short years ago she was pulling in over a half of a million dollars from the Los Osos Community Services District for popping out a few "spiffy quarterly publications," and all of a sudden both Singleton and her company seem to be awfully hard to find.
  
  From a December, 2003, Tribune opinion piece:
  
  "What kind of bang for its buck has the community been getting from the district's public relations firm? Spiffy quarterly publications called Bear Pride on heavy stock paper filled with graphics and color. Unfortunately, all the whistles and bells haven't served their desired purpose: A growing segment of the community seems to have ever more questions about the changing nature of the sewer. The question arises: Have relations between the district and public been served? Apparently not."
  
  Apparently not! Because those "ever more questions" about the "changing nature of the sewer" were never, and I mean EVER, answered with that half million bucks.
  
  Instead, Los Osos got this...
  
  From a December, 2003, Tribune report regarding the Singleton contract:
  
  "An effort to clear up confusion and misinformation surrounding the Los Osos sewer project may have backfired. Some Los Osos residents and business people are upset by a contract approved in November by the district Board of Directors to pay $318,595 for seven months of public relations work." (Note: The contract was an extension of a 13-month, $200,000 contract that was previously secured by Singleton.)
  
  Tribune reporter, David Sneed, got that wrong.
  
  That was never, "An effort to clear up confusion and misinformation surrounding the Los Osos sewer..."
  
  Oh, no, no, no.
  
  Let's be crystal clear on what that "effort" was: That was an effort to create "confusion and misinformation surrounding the Los Osos sewer," and it was paid for by the same people it was targeted at. (Give me a sec... I'll be right back... I need go to take some nausea "medicine.")
  
  THAT's why none of those "ever more questions" were answered. They were never intended to be answered, just obfuscated.
  
  The Tribune finishes off their opinion piece with this great blast:
  
  "Perhaps the first whittling from the Singleton contract could be the $6,000 budgeted for "media relations." Why? When Singleton was contacted about her contract by The Tribune, she said she couldn't comment and referred questions about it to district officials.
  
  Now that's bang for your buck."
  
  That is quality smack. (Why don't they write more editorials like that?)
  
  Sooooooo.......... ummmmmm.......... that seemed like $518,000 well spent, huh? It ensured that voters in Los Osos would stay completely confused on why they originally voted for a $38.75/month ponding system in 1998, but were now getting a $much-much-much-more-than-that/month industrial sewer plant in the middle of their town. Plus, there was the added bonus of the Tribune getting stonewalled by Singleton (and, by the way, major props to the Trib, at least they were able to track her down... that's more than I can say) even though she pocketed $6,000 to talk to them, and these days, just three years later, Singleton & Associates seems to be nowhere in sight... gonzo, with over a half million dollars of Los Osos taxpayer money for less than two years worth of "work" -- "work" that would prove to be nothing more than a publicly financed, behavior based marketing mindfuck, just like Nash-Karner's public opinion study two years earlier.
  

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Toldjaso... killer stuff.

Blackburn's piece touched a nerve with me.

After covering, extensively, Los Osos over the past 17 years, I can't overstate how uncomfortable I am with government agencies using public funds for marketing aimed at influencing opinion on a controversial public project.

That practice needs to be banned immediately.

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[NOTE: A fun, little side-bar here: A few months back, Dan Blackburn phoned me about an unrelated subject, and we got to-a-talkin' about that Singleton contract -- this is SO good -- turns out, when Blackburn was with New Times, he reported on that contract, so he's familiar with it.

I was telling him about Nash-Karner's two decades worth of "behavior based marketing" in Los Osos, and that's when I asked him this question, "Has anyone ever seen Pandora Nash-Karner and Maria Singleton in the same room, at the same time?"

To me, that's a half-funny/half-outstanding question.

Blackburn told me that he has -- when he went out to the LOCSD offices in 2004 to interview Singleton about the contract, and take one guess at who else just happened to be at that meeting?

Blackburn said, "Yea, Pandora was there. She had cookies and tea all laid out for me."

That's where I immediately interrupted him, and asked, "Dan, did that 'cookies and tea' just happen to be there, or was it there specifically for you?"

He said, "Oh, it was there specifically for me."

I told him, "You were 'behavior based marketed' right there, Dan."

He groaned.

After we straightened all that out, he did, indeed, say that he saw Nash-Karner and Singleton in the same room, at the same time.

I then had another question for Blackburn: "Did you ask Singleton for identification?"

He said, "No. I didn't think I'd have to."

I said, "I don't blame you one bit. But, if that had been me, knowing what I know, I would have said something like: "Maria, I realize this is kind of an unusual question, but I have to verify it for the validity of my story... may I please see some identification?"

By the way, has anyone been able to track down Singleton yet?

I have some questions for her, IF she exists.]

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