Council scraps city PR post
Mayor says move to de- fund position is short-sighted; Gendron complains of personal attacks
WOONSOCKET – As expected, members of the City Council axed Business Outreach and Public Relations Coordinator Blake Collins’ job Monday, saying he’s being used too much as a tool for the promotion of Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt’s political interests.
In a 5-2 vote cast along increasingly familiar lines, the council stripped the $49,000 a year position of funding effective April 29. Council President Daniel Gendron, Vice President Jon Brien, Councilors Richard Fagnant, Denise Sierra and James Cournoyer voted with the majority, while Councilors Melissa Murray and Christopher Beauchamp voted to save Collins’ job.
Murray said the administration needs a point person to nurture ties with investment prospects.
“This is not good timing and I do not think it’s a wise move for economic development,” said Murray. “If we’re going to see economic development continue it’s crucial we have someone in place who can help these people out.”
But Cournoyer and other members of the council said the position was being used to burnish the mayor’s image – sometimes at the expense of the council’s. As Cournoyer put it, “the last straw” came in the administration’s clash with Baldelli-Hunt over two companies vying to rehabilitate the old middle school. Last August, when the council nixed the mayor’s preference for a Chicago company, Collins issued statements critical of the council for putting a solid investment prospect on ice.
After a second round of bidding led to the council’s recent selection of the Tai-O Group of Central Falls as an alternative to the administra- tion’s preference, Cournoyer said he asked Collins for a similar press release touting the major economic development initiative.
Collins, he said, refused, explaining that he thought the topic had been adequately covered.
“That really struck me,” said Cournoyer. “No press release. Nothing. Crickets…. To me that’s inexcusable. We owed it to the city
to have press release to let the public know the city is open for business. Quite frankly, we owed it to Tai-O.”
Gendron said some of the statements coming out of City Hall last August, after the council balked at awarding the contract to Chicago-based Hawthorne Group, were “nasty press releases” that were directed at him personally. When the council approved the Tai-O contract, he said, it was “muzzled” by the administration from using city resources to issue news about a positive result from the council’s efforts.
Gendron said he did not blame Collins for deciding what to write about, suggesting it was the mayor who was making decisions about content. “Everybody has a boss,” Gendron said.
Vice President Brien said he expected the council’s decision to be viewed as a political salvo, but it’s not.
“It’s the opposite of being a politically motivated move,” he said. “This body is moving to take the politics out of the position.”
Baldelli-Hunt wasn’t present for most of Monday’s night’s council meeting. But during a portion of the meeting normally reserved for citizens to speak extemporaneously on any subject, she defended Collins’ position as vital for cultivating investment prospects and keeping residents informed about goings-on in their community.
“Putting out press releases is what I consider to be informative for the residents and taxpayers, but not only to the residents and taxpayers but also the people who look to come into the city of Woonsocket,” said the mayor. “More often than not when I am contacted by someone who has interest in the city of Woonsocket, they actually will refer to something that they read in the newspaper or they heard on the news.”
She said cutting Collins’ position would have an adverse effect throughout city government because the public relations coordinator serves as a liaison between the media and various department heads who seek to distribute information they deem worthy of publicity.
She urged councilors to reconsider the elimination of the position until they had a chance to discuss it with her and other department directors.
“The position in our estimation brings much more value to the city than what the cost is,” she said. “We are stripping everyone of that benefit but most importantly we are stripping the taxpayers and residents of having the ability of knowing what is happening in the communi- ty.”
The only other person to rise to the lectern during the open comment portion of the meeting to address the subject of the job cut was the person who is perhaps most affected by it – Collins.
He said he was there to voice his “ardent opposition” to the defunding of his position, saying he had a good track record of building rapport with businesses looking to plant roots in the city.
“I’m losing my job because of this ordinance,” said Collins. “Look, I’ve performed what I was hired to do. So in a sense I’m losing my job for doing exactly what I was hired to do.”
A native of Rehoboth, Mass., Collins, 28, has been employed by the city for about nine months and previously worked in Central Falls, where he held a similar title. After the meeting, Collins expressed regret that his name had become entangled in a political feud that was really between the mayor and the city council, calling it “personally embarrassing.”
He said he intends to continue working for the city until his salary budget is exhausted “and I will be assessing my next steps until then.”