NOREEN: Wilber doesn't need PR, he IS PR
The Gazette reported last week that Colorado Springs Utilities spent $747,000 for the services of a Denver-based public relations firm which helped run interference for the multi-billion Southern Delivery System.
The expenditure was deemed necessary even though the utility’s own in-house PR/lobbying machinery costs more than $6 million a year.
Wow.
You’d have to be a Kool-Aid-drinking zealot to take those numbers in stride without blinking once or twice. This is the same utility that had no idea where money could be found for a bare-bones approach to opening the South Slope of Pikes Peak to recreation.
It’s the same organization whose tepid response to the city’s park-watering crisis has resulted in neighborhood parks and medians that are beginning to look like the Serengeti.
Swimming pools are dry. Downtown’s fountains must go begging.
Yet Denver-based Sigler Communications is absolutely swimming in cash.
The company has a good track record for applying the most artful spin to some of Colorado’s most notorious environmental disasters. But you have to wonder what the utility is getting for the $6 million it is paying for its own spin control, and why its many in-house spin meisters are not up to a task that would seem to be precisely what they are trained for.
Apparently, the epic challenge of making Colorado Springs Utilities look good is more than most can comprehend.
Meanwhile, the Uncle Wilber Fountain in Acacia Park won’t be operational until about June 19. The latest delay is due to a broken part that must be custom-made.
But the fact is the whimsical, charming fountain, given to the city in 2001 by the Smokebrush Gallery, has been forced to go begging to pay its mechanical and water bills. It has some good friends, too, including the Gay and Lesbian Fund and the Bristol Brewing Co.
It is curious that a utility awash in money and obsessed with its image isn’t on Uncle Wilber’s list of friends. But Springs Utilities hasn’t sent money to Wilber this year or last, when it was really needed.
Right now, it appears Uncle Wilber will operate for only about half the season. Marie Newbrough, a member of the Uncle Wilber board, said “If we get extra funds we are talking about operating after September, but there’s no guarantee.”
If you’d like to help Uncle Wilber, mail payments to: Friends of the Fountain, PO Box 1930, 80901. Or Join “Friends of Uncle Wilber Fountain” Facebook group. Donations also can be made by going to
http:
/www.unclewilberfountain.org and click “donate.”
If you’d like to send a check to Sigler Communications, you’re going to have to look up the address yourself.
—
