Friday, July 11, 2008

Interesting Math

As most of you know, the Watcher is saddened by the cancellation of West Covina City Council meetings on Channel 55. According to city officials, it was due to budget cuts.

However, there was no attempt to kill Discover West Covina, the city's monthly newsletter that goes out to all residents. I have noted on this blog in the past that I would prefer to have the non-edited broadcasts of the meetings than the "Herfert Herald," which is loaded with warm and fuzzy Big League Dreams news and other fluff controlled by the city. Some call it propaganda.

An interesting tidbit, though: Discover West Covina probably costs more to produce than the airing of the Council meetings, according to one of my wonderful readers.

He or she says City Manager Andrew Pasmant stated the broadcasts cost about $150-180,000 a year to produce. However, nowhere have I heard how much it costs to publish the newsletter. So, our friend did some math for us, which is a good thing because the Watcher is not very good at the math. I have the lady in accounting balance my checkbook (I kid.) So, A. Williams is going to break it down for you:

The City manager also acknowledge[d] that the city publishes 35,000 copies of the Discover West Covina magazine every month.

If you conservatively estimate the cost of publishing the Discover West Covina @ approximately $1.75 + .41 postage=$2.16 each. or
35,000 X 2.16 X 12 montn=$907,200/yr.

The City Manager also indicated that they could cut back on the publication, with a 2/3 cut back there would still be a publishing cost $302,400

So... does anyone know how much it costs to publish and distribute the newsletter? If so, I would LOVE to know.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Silly someone, missing the recent 1cent increase. I hope all your bills have been getting paid as First class stamps currently cost $.42, but that doesn't really matter because the newsletters would be distributed via Bulk Mail.
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So the calculation should read more along the lines of $1.75+0.20(bulk mail rate) = $1.95x30,000 (I doubt they mail all of them, and probably distribute some by hand to local businesses, Chamber of Commerce etc.)you still get $58,500*12months= 702,000*2/3(proposed budget cut)= $468,000/year.

The comparison still seems incomplete without looking at how much city staff time goes into preparing either of these items.

I would believe most of the internet broadcasting services (the link for the on-line broadcast, live stream, etc) would have been provided by, channel 55 is it? I may be wrong about that though, and think it may shed some valuable light on the situation.