By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Adding another example to the list of government debacles, the City of Federal Way, Washington spent over a year and sixty-two thousand dollars for a new logo design that the city council promptly sent to the bit bucket.
The mayor in an interview says he still believes the money was well spent.
In an interview with KING 5 News, the mayor said the city interviewed hundreds of individuals and reviewed hundreds more sketches, but in the end decided to return to the original city logo. For what it’s worth the new slogan “Centered on opportunity” was approved.
Turns out many citizens preferred to retain the original logo and the feedback conveying this belief influenced the city council to reject the new logo, and all the others proposed.
“The city got a tremendous amount of feedback. And that ultimately was that was centered on opportunity, the strengths, weaknesses, and challenges of our city.” And that folks, is something apparently well worth $62,000.00 and over a year’s worth of attention by government officials.
I have been very critical of mission statements, especially in the realm of government agencies. These overly-mulled phrases accomplish nothing in terms of performance or services offered by the municipality and instead waste time. It instead comes across as some pie-in-the-sky dreamed up by bureaucrats with too much time on their hands.
Somehow, I just don’t see a large employer relocating to Federal Way because it selected the best slogan available. But I do see a local government in need of reassessing its direction and expenditures.
By Darren Smith
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