CORPUS CHRISTI, Tx — The City of Corpus Christi has a plan to educate the community about its water projects, at a cost of over $1 million.
“The only thing I could react to was ‘Wow’, I mean, it really does blow your mind," District 2 Councilwoman, Sylvia Campos said as she described how she first heard about the campaign.
In a pre-recorded statement posted on social media during a Texas Campaign for the Environmentvirtual press conference, Campos emphasized that she is against the idea behind the million-dollar promotion and will take steps to understand why the city is choosing to go this route.
“As far as the million-dollar media campaign, I’m totally against it," Campos said. "We need to do a deep dive. We need to do an audit and I will be requesting an audit.”
In the same virtual meeting in which Campos voiced her concerns, other community members, including Councilman Jim Klein, were also against the marketing initiative. Many of those speaking against the campaign were looking at the city’s decision for a seawater desalination plant as their biggest concern.
“Every dollar that the city is spending is a dollar that isn’t actually going towards the real need in the community," Dr. Isabel Araiza, Founder of For the Greater Good said. "The real need in the community is to repair our ailing infrastructure.”
However, Corpus Christi Water Chief Operating Officer, Drew Molly, said the decision of a marketing campaign is not only for desalination, but to educate the community on all water supply projects.
“In our instance what we're trying to do is we’re trying to make sure that we have the best ability to communicate with the public, to communicate with our community to make sure they understand some of the projects that we think are really important for the public to be well informed about," Molly said.
He also added that his department is also considering working with Texas-based marketing firms to keep the campaign efforts as local as possible. Although some taxpayers believe the budget may be large, Molly emphasized that $1.5 million investment is what’s needed for a successful campaign. He compared Corpus Christi's potential budget with other cities in Texas, including El Paso, which he said pays more for various campaign efforts to ensure proper reach in the community.
“We look at some of the leading entities that are out there and we recognized how successful they have been," Molly said. "We basically looked at those types of organizations and we figured out, for us to be more successful than we’ve been, that’s kind of what it’s going to take.”
As of now, Molly said Corpus Christi Water has not made a final decision on which marketing firm they’ll choose to handle their campaign. Once they decide, the city will move forward with signing a contract.
According to a Request for Proposal (RFP) Presentation by Corpus Christi Water, the term of the contract will be for one year with four, one-year options after the first.
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