Princeton Approves $50K For PR Firm To Redesign, Manage Newsletter

PRINCETON, NJ — A seemingly routine resolution launched a debate among Councilmembers during Monday’s meeting.

Council voted on a resolution to pay PR firm Taft Communications up to $50,250 to redesign and manage the municipality newsletter beginning April 1.

However, Mayor Mark Freda and a few council members noted that the price tag was high for a weekly newsletter.

“I got to ask – they're going to do a once-a-week newsletter. And for that, we are paying them over $14,000 in April and over $7,000 a month thereafter?” Freda asked.

Councilwoman Michelle Pirone Lambros said the pricing was because the newsletter was going to get a completely new design and the PR firm was going to do writing for the newsletter which would be different than cut-and-paste items.

“It’s going to be a reset,” Pirone Lambros said. “Eventually we’ll have a staff person do this. We also need better outreach. We are not reaching enough people with the newsletter.”

The Councilwoman pointed out that the newsletter was an important tool of communication for the Municipality, but very few people read it, according to a survey by Taft to determine the effectiveness of the newsletter.

Councilman Leighton Newlin said he heard from community members who said the $50,250 figure was too high for the newsletter.

“But I’m going to vote yes for it because of the importance of our communication, understanding that is for a six-month period. I would encourage all of us to look closely at the numbers,” Newlin said.

Councilwoman Leticia Fraga said she hoped part of the newsletter outreach will include solutions for reaching out to non-English speaking residents.

Councilwoman Eve Niedergang agreed with Newlin saying she did find the figure high. However, hiring a public relations employee would prove to be more expensive and often Municipality communication failed to reach residents.

“We need to be more nimble in terms of how we reach out to the community and draw people to the source of information so that they know what’s going on and they have a place to go and ask questions,” Niedergang said.

Freda then suggested that the monthly report on analytics be sent to the entire governing body, so everyone could get an idea of the changes and see how successfully they were being implemented.

The need to better communicate with residents won out and the resolution was adopted unanimously.

Lawrenceville-based Taft Communication will redesign the newsletter, provide content and related counseling services for $50,250.

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