Huntington Beach has scrapped a brand management and marketing contract plan that had been clouded by community concerns over transparency and cronyism.
Read more Corky: Honoring the greats with the Surfers’ Hall of Fame
City Council members agreed at their last meeting to close the bidding process for the proposed contract that would have hired a company to revamp the city’s merchandising and licensing systems, saying what was proposed couldn’t happen in the timeframe city leaders were looking for, among other issues.
The controversy began last month when Mayor Casey McKeon proposed awarding a two-year, $750,000 contract to Wolffhaus, a local firm run by Tyler Wolff and described as “part brand incubator, part strategic operator.”
The city had paid the firm $30,000 earlier in the year to perform an audit of its “creative, brand, media, press and digital ecosystem,” and the contract would have had Wolffhaus acting on the recommendations it came up with to address issues it had identified, such as millions of dollars in annual licensing and tourism revenues lost, partly due to negative media coverage in recent years.
Wolffhaus proposed creating a city-controlled merchandising program and establishing a film and digital media office to attract Hollywood production crews to Surf City.
But there was immediate backlash with some residents wondering why only one vendor was considered for such a costly project. Some said the city’s financial and reputational woes had less to do with branding than the legal battles the City Council is waging — and losing.. Others raised conflict-of-interest concerns, as Wolff’s Facebook page indicated that his fiancée is McKeon’s appointee to Huntington Beach’s Community and Library Services Commission.
McKeon, who denied any claims of cronyism, pulled the proposed agreement on April 7, and instead, the City Council put out a request for proposals. Councilmembers Pat Burns, Don Kennedy and Butch Twining formed an ad hoc committee tasked with reviewing the bids.
After evaluating 10 serious submissions, Twining said the committee decided it would be better to cancel the request for proposals because none of the bids offered any deliverables before America’s 250th anniversary.
Read more Kennedy High graduation postponed by Garden Grove hazmat scare has new date
“The first 60 days were interviewing staff, interviewing retailers, interviewing these different people,” Twining said. “Nobody could have met the Fourth of July deadline we wanted to cash in on.”
Twining added that he felt many of the recommendations outlined in the Wolffhaus audit could be implemented internally by city staff or in tandem with nonprofits such as Visit Huntington Beach.
Burns said the project was an innovative way to generate revenue for the city, but it had been derailed by allegations and political theater.
“Politics sucks, and it’s ugly, and I think this was a classic case of it,” he said, adding he hopes “it doesn’t prohibit or discourage people coming to us with good ideas, and it fall apart because of politics,” he said.
McKeon said the public attacks against Wolff and his company were “totally unacceptable.” He maintained that Wolffhaus is the most qualified vendor to tackle the merchandising and licensing issues that have an impact on the “structural budget issues” the city is experiencing.
“We have a lot of private sector people here, and if they bring forward ideas and proposals and you don’t like it, that’s fine,” he said. “Come up with a different idea, but you don’t need to attack someone personally.”