By Ian Holmes

Nanaimo’s Communications Department small when Compared to others

Jun 24, 2016 | 4:39 PM

The city of Nanaimo’s communications department may not be as large or cost-heavy as some people think.

The city reports it’s annual communications department budget of three full-time workers and all operating expenses is $333,000. That’s below the average of just over 5 full-time staff and $550,000 spent annually as reported by five cities of similar size to Nanaimo.

City of Nanaimo CAO Tracy Samra believes a misconception of its communications department is that it focuses on political spin.

“Our communications and public engagement group serves the city, it serves the citizens and it serves the staff, it spends a vast majority of its time, 80% of the time, on internal communication functions,” Samra said.

Samra theorizes on the negative flack their communications department receives from time-to-time.

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“I think it’s because they attribute communications automatically to political communications, and they don’t think about the public awareness and information campaigns that cities do.”

Considerable heat was hurled toward the city when former Nanaimo Daily News editor Mark MacDonald was hired by Samra in the spring to serve as a communications consultant for $90.00 an hour.

Samra isn’t ruling out a potential expansion to the city’s communications department.

The city of Kelowna has the largest communications department and budget of the five similar sized cities to Nanaimo that we checked into, with more than 12 full-time staff and an annual operating budget of $896,000.

The lowest we investigated was the city of Chilliwack with one full-time staff member and an operating budget of $135,000.

The Regional District of Nanaimo has one full-time communications employee and an annual operating budget of $200,000.

Here is a breakdown of the communications departments Island Radio News researched:

Kelowna – 12.5 employees. Annual operating budget of $896,000

Victoria – 7 employees. Annual operating budget of $670,000

Kamloops – 4 employees Annual operating budget of $624,000

Prince George – 2 employees.  Annual operating budget of $422,000

Nanaimo – 3 employees. Annual operating budget of $333,000

Chilliwack – 1 employee. Annual operating budget of (estimated) $135,000

Regional District of Nanaimo – 1 employee. Annual operating budget of $200,000