- April 25, 2024
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The Flagler County Tourism Development Office is getting up to $252,700 for spending on events and advertising.
The Flagler County Commission at its regular Dec. 5 meeting considered three agenda items related to tourism spending, ultimately approving all three unanimously after some questions by commissioners.
The first of the items is for up to $75,000 per year to be allocated for spending on graphic design services.
"This might be designing pieces specifically to be placed as magazine ads, or print material or Visit Florida or stuff like that," County Administrator Craig Coffey said. "So this is a component of our overall advertising."
Commissioner Donald O'Brien noted that the $75,000 was an increase from $41,000 the previous year.
"We may not spend that much, depending on our graphic design needs," said Matt Dunn, the county's tourism chief. "Since then, we have increased the number of collateral pieces that we do have. We recently created a new birding brochure; we created a new weddings brochure and we've also created a specific visitors guide for the Florida official Welcome Centers throughout the state."
The money would be spent on contracts with four graphic design firms that responded to a county request for proposals. The contracts would be for two-year terms, with an option to renew for three additional one-year terms, according to county meeting documentation.
A total of six firms had responded to the county's request for proposals, but one was eliminated from consideration and another didn't submit required documentation.
The four firms selected were The Brandon Agency, Evok Advertising, Fuseideas and TypeFace Studios.
Commissioner David Sullivan asked why four firms had been selected, rather than one.
"Some excel at certain areas versus others," Dunn said. And, he said, "Some graphic designers, their hourly fee is a lot less than others. So we took that into consideration when the committee was reviewing those bids, and we wanted to ... have the options rather than go with only one that maybe can fulfill all of the services that we're looking for although at a higher dollar amount."
Coffey said that by developing contracts with all four, the county is developing a "library" of graphic design services that can be used in the future.
The county already has libraries of firms for architecture and engineering, he said, "So this is the same kind of deal that we're setting up for this tourism creative work. We're setting up a library so we can then do task orders for individual missions based on the quality of the firm and the specifics of the specialty of that firm."
The county also approved tourism spending on four sports events: $10,000 for the PDA Florida – NPL Soccer Showcase Dec. 26-31 at the Indian Trails Sports Complex; $7,500 for the PDA Florida Winter Invitational Jan. 13-15 at the Indian Trails Sports Complex; $25,000 for a Sports Endeavors – EVP TOUR volleyball tournament May 31 to June 4, 2017, at the Hammock Beach Resort; and $5,000 for the Florida Flag Football State Championships June 23-27, 2017, at the Indian Trails Sports Complex.
The combined direct visitor spending from the four events is estimated to total $5,186,450, with the volleyball tournament bringing in the least — just $107,505 — but making up for it, according to a county meeting backup document, with exposure: The event will be televised nationally a minimum of 190 times, and the county will get three commercials and one 60-second destination spotlight per show.
In the last tourism-related agenda item considered at the meeting, the commission approved a $130,200 contract with Just Program, LLC, the company which already host the county's tourism website.
The county could have gone out for competitive bidding for that service but elected not to, choosing instead to stay with Just Program.
"Any successful bidder would still have to interface with Just Program LLC even though Just Program LLC can offer these services and do so more efficiently," the county's meeting backup documentation states. "To prevent marketing disruptions, county staff is recommending that the additional services added over the years be purchased form our current provider."
This single-source procurement is a "temporary measure" for under 12 months, extending through Sept. 30, 2017, according to the county documents.
