City Commissioners Blasted by EastTexasOnline.com

According to Ron Munden of EastTexasTownOnline.com
"City Manager Frank Johnson has called a special meeting of the City Commission for Friday at 1:45 p.m. to award a contract for $40,000 to an architectural firm to begin planning documents for Old City Hall.

Based on telephone calls to several City Commissioners, it appears they were unaware of this item until they received a letter from the City Manager on Wednesday, January 21, 2009. None were fully aware of the intent of this item. With one exception, none had seen any material related to the contract.

Based on other telephone calls, it appears that the Brand Development Committee (BDC) was unaware of this contract and the BDC was completely bypassed by the City Manager.

The Tourism Plan, which was approved in its entirety by the City Commission, calls for the BDC to coordinate all of the city's tourism efforts.

Currently, the BDC has almost $200,000 in consulting contracts underway. One is a $35,000 venue analysis contract that will be completed in February.

It is difficult to understand how the City Commissioners can approve a contract that has not been reviewed by the BDC. It is even more difficult to believe that they would not wait a month to see the results of the venue analysis contract before they award another related contract. I can't believe that the City Commissioners want to do this.

What's happening? Is the City Manager up to his old tricks again?"

From this perspective, it seems what's good for the goose should be good for the gander.

If I recall, It wasn't that long ago, when Mr. Munden reportedly stepped down from his position as the quarterback of the Branding Committee so he could enter his bid
for the BDC/Tourism website. In fact, the letting for the bid was held originally in December and then notices went out in January.
Two months before other web vendors in town even heard about the bid. In fact, the two leading web design firms that have more websites in this city than any other,
were completely left out of the bidding process until it was almost over. Seems he knows how to dish it out but when it comes back around, well, that is a different story.

Of course, this doesn't excuse the City Commission for keeping the consulting contract under wraps until the end, if that is what they actually did.
East Texas has always had its share of good-ol-boy under-the-table politics. Thus, this is not surprising or out of character for this city.

Concerned Citizen wondering why we live and pay taxes in Marshall Tx.
What do you think Marshall?