Park, bus, library systems spend $1M to promote programs

By PETER H. MILLIKEN

milliken@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Three local institutions serving Mahoning County that rely heavily on countywide taxes collectively budget hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for planned communications that promote public support and use of their facilities.

Those institutions are the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County, which just passed a levy; Mill Creek MetroParks, which is planning a levy campaign; and the Western Reserve Transit Authority, which plans one in 2017.

Together, their 2014 promotional budgets total more than $1 million.

On Nov. 4, the library system’s efforts resulted in a resounding success when voters approved, 59-to-41 percent, a 2.4-mill, five-year real-estate tax levy to generate $9.3 million annually for the system, which operates on a $14.2 million annual budget.

The 15-branch countywide library system’s levy was among 31 Ohio public library levies to pass that day out of 34 such levies on the ballot.

“People in Mahoning County truly do love their library and appreciate the benefits they receive from library services and materials,” said Heidi Daniel, library director, after the levy passed.

“And second, communications and marketing played a key role” in levy passage by explaining confusing ballot language to the public and disseminating information about library programs and services, she added.

The library levy results were contrasts in urban-suburban areas and rural areas.

It won by comfortable, and sometimes overwhelming, margins in all seven wards of Youngstown, and in Campbell, Struthers, Boardman, Austintown, Canfield city and township, and Poland village and township.

It lost in many rural townships. Notably, it failed in Jackson and Milton townships and in Craig Beach, despite the 2013 opening of the new $2 million Tri-Lakes Branch serving that area.

“We have seen this pattern in previous elections,” said Janet Loew, library communications and public relations director, referring to strong library support in and around Youngstown, and defeat or narrow margins of victory in rural areas.

Daniel said she was puzzled by nonsupport of the library levy in some rural areas, where library officials haven’t received complaints and library branches “have healthy usage.”

“We feel that more analysis is needed, and it would seem like a good idea to increase our communications efforts in those parts of the county,” she said.

The library system’s levy history began in 1920, with a Youngstown-only levy, and went countywide in 1961. The only time a library levy was defeated here was in June 1976, but the same levy passed in November 1976.

Mill Creek MetroParks could place a levy on the ballot as soon as November 2015. The MetroParks Board of Commissioners conducted a sparsely-attended 7:30 a.m. Saturday meeting Dec. 13 to gather information about running a levy campaign.

And the Western Reserve Transit Authority will likely place its sales tax levy on the November 2017 ballot for renewal.

Messages from these institutions are spread across the full spectrum of media, including newspapers, radio and television, billboards, the Internet and telephone and city directories.

These organizations legally are permitted to use tax dollars to promote their programs and services and to inform voters of facts about their tax levies.

But there is a line not to cross in their messages. They may not use public money to suggest how people should vote.

the library system Mahoning County’s library system budgeted nearly $500,000 this year in its combined advertising, marketing, public-relations and fundraising efforts.

The largest component of this year’s total is $313,651 for salaries and benefits of five library staff members devoted to promotional activities.

The next largest component of the 2014 promotional budget is $85,000 to be spent for the purchase of advertising, compared with expenditures of $72,221 in 2013 and $74,118 in 2012.

This year’s increase in this category occurred “because 2014 is a particularly big year” due to the levy, Loew explained. The library system needed to “provide information to the public to make sure they’re fully informed.”

The Citizens Committee for the Library Levy, a political-action committee, spent $46,106, all of it in private donations, this year on the campaign.

The library’s challenge was to explain to voters that it plans to allow a 1-mill levy to expire and that it wanted the voters to renew its 1.8-mill levy and add 0.6 of a mill to it, with the result being an 11 percent reduction in local library taxes for real-estate owners, Loew said.

The library system had “a very confusing ballot issue” to explain to voters because the ballot language contained the words “renewal and increase,” even though the net effect of the measure was to reduce taxes, Daniel said.

With no new major construction projects planned after completion of the current $5 million Canfield library replacement and the forthcoming

$14 million main library renovation, the debt-free library system will be able to live on reduced local levy income, Daniel explained.

Print and broadcast advertising for this year’s library-levy campaign, however, warned that failure of the levy would result in a 50 percent cut in library locations, programs and services.

In its promotional efforts, the library system uses a combination of its own staff and its outside advertising and marketing agency, Farris Marketing of Boardman.

“You want well-qualified, well-experienced people running those departments because they are in charge of the image of your institution,” Daniel said of her promotional staff.

“When the community sees that they have something of value, they want to support it and keep it as strong as it is,” Loew said.

In addition to what it will pay for its own promotional staff, the library system plans to spend $52,507 this year for Farris’ creative services.

“We use the Farris agency for specialty things. They are political strategists. They help us with our levy campaign. They are experts in broadcast media,” Loew said of the agency the library has used for the past 18 years.

“We know that there is an impact to marketing,” Daniel said.

As evidence of that, Loew pointed to the increase in the number of user sessions on the library’s libraryvisit.org web site from about 833,000 in 2011 to 929,000 in 2012 and 1.2 million in 2013.

Reference questions rose from some 191,000 in 2011 to 210,000 in 2012 and 281,000 in 2013, she added.

The number of summer reading program completers rose from 1,678 in 2012 to 2,098 in 2013 and 3,954 this year, Loew noted.

As for fundraising, Loew said $464,127 has been pledged so far toward the $500,000 capital campaign goal for the new Canfield library.

MILL CREEK METROPARKS

Mill Creek MetroParks also makes a substantial investment in marketing and fundraising, with significant growth in budgets for those activities in recent years.

The parks’ budget for those activities grew from $222,600 in 2012 to $313,583 in 2013 and $353,700 this year.

Those figures include payroll for staff members devoted to those activities, but not benefit costs, which are estimated at 39 percent of salaries.

The figures do include money spent for promotional brochures, for purchase of advertising and for the creative services of Jeffrey A. Ryznar, a $50-an-hour outside marketing consultant, whose minimum fee was $1,000 a month.

“The development and marketing department has been identified as an area offering the most opportunity to improve the overall efforts of the MetroParks,” said Dennis Miller, MetroParks executive director, who has resigned and will be leaving at the end of the year.

Late this month, the MetroParks board of commissioners unanimously hired Aaron Young of Braceville, director of planning and operations at the Geauga Park District, to replace Miller.

Miller attributed the growth in the park district’s marketing and fundraising budget to the reorganization of those functions and the addition of a full-time employee.

Samantha Villella, who joined the park district in March 2013 in the newly created $57,200-a-year position of community engagement director, now supervises those activities and reports directly to Miller. A position of identical salary, a fundraising director, has not been replaced.

Ryznar was hired because he has expertise that supplemented the skills of park staff, Miller said. Villella said the park district isn’t planning to renew its contract with Ryznar, which expired Dec. 1, however.

The park district’s board of commissioners has not decided when it will place a park levy on the ballot and what form it will take, Villella said.

The park district now has a 15-year, 1.75-mill countywide real estate tax levy that raises about $6.5 million annually and expires at the end of 2016. The earliest it could go on the ballot for renewal or replacement would be next November.

The park district’s total 2014 budget is slightly more than $12 million including operating funds and capital and grant projects.

Villella said the park district would not change its approach to public relations in the wake of the controversy surrounding the June 26 euthanasia of 238 geese in Mill Creek Park.

She said the park’s marketing efforts have achieved demonstrable results, with its website sessions having more than tripled from 11,255 in January to 35,234 in June.

The park’s fundraising last year yielded $43,810 in grants, capital campaign gifts and other donations and bequests, plus an additional $50,000 for marketing and signs from the Mill Creek MetroParks Foundation.

WESTERN RESERVE TRANSIT AUTHORITY

Another local public agency that maintains high visibility through advertising is the Western Reserve Transit Authority.

Two key differences between the transit authority and the library and park systems, however, are that the transit authority doesn’t publish a monthly newsletter devoted to programs and events, and that the authority does not have any employees with job titles devoted to advertising, marketing and public relations.

Marianne Vaughn, authority treasurer, places the majority of the advertising designed to promote visibility and ridership.

The authority paid an outside ad agency, Burges & Burges of Cleveland, $6,500 for creative services and $3,391 for a public-opinion survey in 2012.

The authority’s $11 million annual operating budget comes from a 0.25 percent countywide sales tax that raises about $8 million annually and from federal funds and fare-box revenues.

The authority will likely put the sales tax on the ballot for renewal for five years in November 2017, Vaughn said.

That tax was first passed by voters in 2008 and renewed in 2012.

The authority spent a total of $209,758 in 2012 and $171,883 in 2013 on advertising, marketing and public relations, with $250,000 budgeted for these activities this year.

Vaughn credits the authority’s promotional activities with boosting ridership from 1,331,148 in 2011 to 1,391,478 in 2012 and 1,478,794 in 2013, with 1,132,914 in the first nine months of this year.

The WRTA’s board of directors created a marketing director position on the authority’s staff in September 2011, setting a broad salary range of $40,000 to $80,000 a year for it, but the position has never been filled.

“We just never got around to it. I’ve been handling it,” Vaughn said of the unfilled position.

“We’ve always had a very small staff, and all of us wear several different hats,” Vaughn said.

She said she believes the authority will eventually need to hire a marketing director. That’s because the advertising and promotional activities are too much for her to handle in addition to her duties as treasurer and because she doesn’t consider herself an expert in advertising design and media buying, she said.