Bankrupt San Bernardino Seeks $125,000 Image Makeover

By James Nash

San Bernardino, California, has been bankrupt for two years. Violent crime is more than double the U.S. average, highlighted by recent incidents when gunmen critically injured a police officer and opened fire on children.
Stung by negative national and local media reports, leaders of the city about 60 miles (100 kilometers) east of Los Angeles want to improve San Bernardino’s image. The city of 210,000 asked public relations firms to submit proposals by today showing how they’d restore the inland suburb’s civic luster.
The winning firm will get $125,000 a year to help San Bernardino “change how it is perceived by itself, its citizens and all those who come across
the city of San Bernardino,” according to a request for proposals issued last month.
“As we emerge from bankruptcy, there will be a rehabilitation of our image and a rebranding of the city,” said Michael McKinney, chief of staff to Mayor Carey Davis. “It’s going to be very important over time.”
Before filing for Chapter 9 bankruptcy and cutting its workforce in 2012, San Bernardino had a staff member assigned to deal with media and the public. The communications manager was paid $91,000 in 2011 in addition to benefits totaling $29,000, according to the state controller’s salary database.

Job Eliminated

The bankruptcy eliminated the communications position and brought a flood of negative publicity, such as stories about the town’s political turmoil, misuse of redevelopment funds and above-average violent crime and air pollution.
In August and September, as lawyers for San Bernardino negotiated with creditors in federal bankruptcy court, crimes in the city put it back in the news. In August, a 31-year-old police officer was critically wounded in a gunfight after approaching a group of six people around 2 a.m.
The next month, a man shot at children gathering around an ice cream truck, then later at a police armored vehicle. No one was injured, and the gunman was arrested and pleaded not guilty to charges including attempted murder.
The incidents underscored a violent-crime rate that, at 941 incidents per 100,000 residents in 2012 according to FBI data, is more than twice the national average.
McKinney, who himself is a contractor paid $125,000 a year by San Bernardino, said the public-relations job is less about selling San Bernardino’s virtues to the national media than about communicating with residents.
“It goes to the transparency of government,” he said. “Our residents don’t know what’s going on inside the city because during the bankruptcy, we eliminated the position that was supposed to communicate with the public.”