THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 18, 1994 TAG: 9412170102
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Beth Barber
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
This is not a popularity contest. . . . If this is who knows whom or who likes whom, I shouldn't have gone through the (bid) proc-ess.
That was Bill Reid of Cellar Door Productions, sounding a perfect note of indignation in a room brimful of who's who in Virginia Beach. They had come to persuade City Council to over-rule a city staff recommendation to give Cellar Door the city's events contract and stick with Virginia Beach Events Unlimited.
A non-prof-it organization, VBEU evolved from the first Neptune Festival 21 years ago. Its directors and advisers include top city busi-ness-peo-ple, and former and future King Nep-tunes.
But VBEU's past 18 months were marred by shortfalls in a mil-lion-dollar budget, program cuts, disputed administrative fees, and financial filings that flummoxed some fine fi-nan-cial minds.
At Tuesday's meeting, VBEU supporters persuaded four Council members to VBEU's side. Significantly, they unpersuaded three who had begun on VBEU's side.
In the end, seven members ratified the obvious: However happy Council was with VBEU, Cellar Door offered more programs (22 to VBEU's seven), entertainment expertise, business ex-pe-ri-ence, financial acumen - and more city revenue for less city funding. Plus less city-oversight ag-o-ny.
After four hours of sweat and tears, the events contract moved from business-as-usual to business as it should be. And Virginia Beach moved up a notch from small town to mature city.
The bloodshed could come later, as VBEU's shakers, makers and heavy campaign contributors marshal their forces for Council elections in '96.
And meantime? Well, meantime, Linwood Branch won't be King Neptune. But nevermind the crown. The Beach Borough councilman deserves credit for persisting in moving city events to a more busi-ness-like basis. That move began with some of Mr. Branch's fellow hoteliers who served on VBEU's Steering Committee. For sure, hoteliers, who supported and now collect the lodging tax that funds Beach events, will benefit from a better-run program. For sure, so will the city and its 411,000 citizens.
Meantime, too, somebody should squelch a not-so-veiled threat at Tuesday's Council meeting: that depriving VBEU of the city events contract could deprive the city of the Neptune Festival.
Why? Under VBEU's current con-tract, it and the festival were to be separate entities. The demise of one shouldn't mean the demise of the other. And if, as was suggested, Council's vote on this contract sends a discouraging message to volunteers, volunteers who'd take their Neptune ball and go home if the city quits playing - or paying - their way would send a telling message of their own.
Meantime, too, Council should nip a notion budding Tuesday that it should involve itself sooner in the bidding process. Intruding in the process earlier might spare Council an embarrassment to which it came parlous close last week: overruling the bid process's result without even reading the competing proposals. But why have a bidding process designed to minimize politics' intrusion only to ignore it sooner or later?
Two things Council should do:
First, let staff committees know they have full Council support for complete candor in their bid anal-yses and recommendations. As Councilman Bill Harrison noted, the committee report omitted instances of VBEU's non-performance on its contract and a comparison of each bidder's ability, as Cellar Door's Mr. Reid promised, to put its money where its mouth is. Such omissions can result from a sense of pressure which bosses should see that subordinates don't feel.
Second, let city departments - and city contractors - know that Council not only supports, it expects staffers' enforcement of the contracts they're assigned to over-see. Passing that word, from the top down, keeps performance up. by CNB