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Council questions Burgess and Burgess communications contract and whether residents were surveyed
Summary
Council members disputed whether Burgess and Burgess was conducting a resident survey under a $48,000 contract; the mayor said the firm is doing internal depth interviews and that an opt-in resident survey was mutually abandoned because of the election year.
Council members at a special Committee of the Whole meeting on April 2 pressed the mayor and the law director for details about a communications contract with Burgess and Burgess and whether the firm had contacted residents as part of a survey.
The mayor said the city entered a contract with Burgess and Burgess last year to support internal and external communications for the Department of Community Services and that “we are not doing a survey. We are doing depth interviews” with internal staff and select stakeholders. He said an opt-in online survey and a phone survey that had been discussed earlier were mutually abandoned because the administration worried the timing — near an election — could skew results or be misinterpreted as political activity.
Several council members said they had seen language in the proposal and contract referring to surveys and that at least one elected official and other stakeholders reported being contacted. One council member pointed out the contract total — $48,000 — falls below a $50,000 threshold that would trigger additional approvals and asked why certain survey items were listed in the paper proposal while the administration now says that work was not carried out. The mayor said the city and the consultant agreed to narrow the scope to internal communications work and depth interviews and that the administration would provide contract documents and deliverables under public-records rules.
Law Director Hannah told council there have been no formal amendments to the written contract to date; she and the mayor said the work product Burgess and Burgess submits to the city will be public record. Council members asked for invoices and any scope-of-work revisions; one council member said he observed six invoices of $8,000 each and requested those records be produced for review.
The committee did not adopt any ordinance or formally approve changes to the contract during the meeting. Council members asked the administration and the law director to make Burgess and Burgess deliverables available for council review through the public-records process and to clarify whether any residents were interviewed and under what terms.
