June 09, 2006

Cost of IMG

How much is IMG costing the City of Worcester?? The “Airport Strategic Plan and Aviation Marketing” study, which can be found on the City of Worcester Website, cost $100,000 last year. Today I received the qtrly reports to the Department of Transportation (DOT) on the Small Community Air Service Grant, as well as some other information from Airport Liaison Niddrie.

Over the past year, we have used IMG’s services and submitted their bills totaling 49,125.51 to the Department of Transportation (DOT) to be reimbursed through the grant This equates to 81.67% of all the of the total monies spent from the grant. Please note a detailed break-down below. Now there is a new contract signed with IMG for $55,640, which I imagine will also be submitted to the DOT.


IMG total = $204,765.51.


Small Community Air Service Grant


6/10/5 IMG $9,750.00
9/27/5 Event $726.75
10/5 thru 11/5 IMG $39,375.51
10/13/5 Sponsorship Event $500.00
10/26/5 Booth Business Expo $500.00
10/28/5 Event $75.00
10/28/5 Event $112.00
12/14/5 Fliers $920.00
12/16/5 Posters $740.00
12/22/5 Event Decorations $220.75
12/22-27/5 Event Catering $4,732.06
1/2/6 Radio Ad $1,500.00
1/16/6 Printing $1,001,.15


Total Spent $60,153.22
IMG $49,125,.51

Percentage of Small Community Air Service Grant Spent on IMG 81.67%

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

qrealxThis should be printed in the T&G
I've already emailed my city councilor.

Bill Randell said...

The thing that I am having a hard time with is that between the resources at MassPort and our own airport administration, why are we paying so much to a consultant..

The monies from the Small Community Air Service Grant should go directly to an airline to lower their overhead or help them market their airline at ORH, not a consultant.

Anonymous said...

I would be nice to intice an airline like Delta or JetBlue with $200,000 in guaranteed money to begin service at ORH.

Bill Randell said...

I am going to simply leave this blog up for the week-end since it is on the very top and hope people will start asking what exactly have we gotten for $200,000 from IMG. Believe me I hope I am wrong and IMG is about to announce four carriers coming to ORH over the next 6 months.

Anonymous said...

It is hard at this point to say the IMG funds were wasted or not. However, even if they were wasted, what about the continuing ongoing, week in and week out personnel costs up there?

I figure it is about $23K per week ($1.2M by 52 weeks). How many employees? 10, 11, 15??

At this juncture IMG is a sunk (water over the dam) cost and not relevant to the future decision.
making process.

It is about time we start looking prospectively not only at marketing intiatives, but at operating expenses and specifically personnel expenses.

Cut or outsource two positions up there and we got $150-200K more to play with to subsidize a couple of new entrants. It's truly a no brainer if the City had the political will to do it. Does the council and/or Mr Murray have the political backbone to do it or at least recommend it? Or will they resort to the old, "It's not our job to handle personnel issues"; whilst behind the scenes they continually involve themselves directly and indirectly in union/labor issues, which involvement is a clear violation of the City charter.

Anonymous said...

http://www.blogger.com/publish-comment.do?blogID=8661737&postID=114972368550410313&r=ok

Re: Open Meeting Laws and Violations. June 10th Herald.

It is a bit comical that a public body violates opening meeting laws and then the local governing authority has to pay the fine.

Translation: Boston City Council violates open meeting laws... City of boston is fined...and the taxpayers end up footing the bill for the fine.

Logical????

Bill Randell said...

Jahn:

I agree.. $200,000 is alot of money, but it is not if we get alot of results....

Right now I see absoloutely no results. Don't say Allegiant... Allegiant was looking for secondary cities like ORH, look at their route map, and they found ORH.. IMG did not find Allegiant..

Guess my main question then is can someone tell us anything that they are doing to justlify this expense??

Bill Randell said...

One other question... Lets assume we are told IMG is having negotiatins with various airlines (they will tell us any names). My next question would be to ask is there nobody at the aiport or at MassPort that can do handel these negotiations??

DOes MassPort hire IMG to look for airlines at Logan?? In the end if I saw a Delta Connection carrier like Mesa or a JetBlue doing a JFK shuttle with IMG's help then the money was well spent.. Bottom line is that we better start seeing some results from IMG>