Don’t hide public notices on city website
Among the Fort Worth city charter amendments facing voters in the May 7 election (early voting started Monday) is Proposition 10:
“Shall Chapter XXVII of the Fort Worth City Charter be amended to add Section 21 to provide for electronic and other web based publications and notices as a substitute for newspaper publications where allowed by State law?”
We’re the newspaper in question. The current charter and state law require that certain public notices — from advertising for bids on city purchases to notices about taxes — be published in an “official newspaper.” In Fort Worth, that’s the Star-Telegram.
We and Fort Worth voters can only assume that the purpose of the change would be to save taxpayer dollars by publishing these notices of public business on the city’s website instead of in the Star-Telegram.
We oppose the change, and we believe voters should, too.
How much money is involved? In 2015, it was $60,774.57.
It’s important that every penny is spent wisely, and we’ll get to that.
First, let’s note that this amount was only 0.01 percent (that’s one one-hundredth of 1 percent) of the city’s 2015 general fund budget.
It’s less than the average general fund employee’s annual salary ($68,067 plus benefits). It’s less than a third of what the city manager’s office budgeted for its own supplies in 2015 ($203,042).
Is newspaper advertising a wise expenditure? If the goal is that people see it, we believe it is.
Audited readership figures show that our printed newspaper is seen by 828,792 people in a typical week. No other publication in Tarrant County compares.
We also put the city’s ads on our star-telegram.com website. The site has had 773,966 unique visitors in the past year, according to data from digital marketing consultant Millward Brown Digital.
Compare that with the city website’s 173,645 unique visitors in the past year — more than 600,000 fewer people than on star-telegram.com.
Our net combined print and online readership is 1,054,384 people in a seven-day period.
Texas newspapers also combine public notices on a free, searchable website that is used by people and businesses with statewide interests. It’s a good way for the city to attract vendors and save money on bids.
Fort Worth city government should want to make people aware of its actions and intent. Proposition 10 takes things in the wrong direction.
This story was originally published April 26, 2016 at 6:16 PM with the headline "Don’t hide public notices on city website."