Smiles through gritted teeth!

As each day goes by I look more & more like Shrek!

I was fortunate to attend last week’s Council meeting to elect the new Metropolitan Mayor, or Metro Mayor as it has now been shortened to, of Waterford City.

As a side note I still read, via the interweb and social media, that there is continued confusion as to why we have two Mayors.

Yes, we have one “Senior” Mayor for the City and Council, who oversees the full plenary Council meetings of 32 Councillors and we have a Metropolitan Mayor of Waterford City, who oversees the Council’s Metropolitan District meetings of 18 Councillors. In addition there are the Comeragh District, 6 Councillors, and Dungarvan/Lismore District, 8 Councillors, neither of which has a Mayor, but they each have a Chairperson. In the future they may well wish to elect their own Mayors, in which case we could end up with four – confused, you may well be!

Anyway back to last week.

At a packed City Council Chambers, on the first floor of the Council buildings on The Mall, we awaited the election, nominations and voting on what turned out to be a two horse race, between Councillor John Hearne (SF) and Councillor L. Cha O’Neill (Ind). You can pre-judge how the voting will go just by looking around the Chamber and counting the number of supporters each candidate has in the public gallery. There were substantially more John Hearne supporters than Cha O’Neill so there would be no surprises on the night.

The order of Mayoral Office candidates was agreed at the very first amalgamated Council meeting, some two years ago, under a system called The D'Hondt Method. This proportionately allocates seats, or in this case positions, based on voting averages. Take into account the supplementary agreements made between the various pact groupings and you could have literally put your house on John Hearne getting the gig.

As is the process with elections, the two candidates still had to be nominated and seconded by fellow Councillors. The Chair also asked for any additional candidates to come forward – but alas none would be selected to add spice, to what would be a tame meeting. It was during this process that we heard the Proposers talk about their candidate and we listened to all manner of contributions that each contender had made to the Council and their Community.

A packed Press Centre!

There was even a suggestion that due to the high number of votes received by Councillor Hearne, at the last elections, he should have been a shoe in for Mayor and even Plenary Mayor. But the fact is at the last Local Council elections we were not voting for a Mayor, we were electing Councillors!

Maybe we do need to have elected Mayors and this would add a whole new dynamic to our local politics. We might even get a Boris!!!!!

Votes cast, there was no surprise that Councillor John Hearne was duly elected by a massive landslide majority of support.

For me the most interesting part of the meeting was after the votes were cast when Councillor after Councillor quite clearly spoke through gritted teeth about how they would support this historic new SF Mayor for Waterford City (Metro Mayor).

Clearly they were playing to the galleries of press in attendance, as I have seen no evidence over the last two years of certain Councillors supporting the opposition! In fact I would go further and say that deep down, many didn’t wish for a SF Mayor, but due to the pact and The D'Hondt Method they had little choice.

So, going forward will we see the Entente Cordiale continue throughout 2016 and into 2017?

David v a Goliath

I would hazard a guess that we will be back to normal at the next Council meeting, where swords will be drawn and normal hostilities will resume. Politics will never change!

As we are still at the bottom of the economic league table, I do wonder if a SF and FF Mayoral combination can be our Wales/Iceland to get us competing with the big boys? I wouldn’t put my house on it!

Unchained melody hits the wrong note!

Positive public relations (PR) for the City and County is an essential part of our marketing mix and is something that, as I have said time and time again, we ALL need to be aware of if we are to promote that City and County in a positive light.

The last seven to ten days have been filled with positive news stories right across the City and County. From the opening of the Lafcadio Hearn Japanese styled gardens in Tramore to the Medieval Festivals in the City and Dungarvan, Dromana 800 in West Waterford to the Promenade Festival in Tramore, Day Tripper concerts in Bolton Street and the Summer In The City musical treats in John Roberts Square and Wyse Park, (to name but a few) we really did have an awful lot to take in over the last seven to ten days.

And all of these events help create a general positive experience when it comes to making us feel better about our City and County and with the local papers full of pictures of our smiling sun drenched beaming pasty faces, eating ice cream, and attending these events, this creates a sense that we are all very predisposed to the upbeat PR messaging we are reading. These messages make us feel warm and fuzzy inside and that is good.

These most simple of generic PR messages have reinforced our knowledge that when all is said and done Waterford really is a great place to live, work and play.

The opposite side of the coin is of course how we might view and comprehend the mountains of self generated PR we come across on a daily basis.

For example, over the last 7 to 10 days we can also throw into the mix all the media and social media commentary on the appointment of the Mayor of Waterford City and County and the appointment of the Mayor of the Waterford Metropolitan area. And when we sit down in the cold light of day to review this messaging do we all believe that these types’ messages also show the City and County in the same positive light?

We have one Mayor serving the City and County (who chairs the main Waterford Council plenary meetings) and one Mayor serving the Metropolitan area of the City (who chairs the Metropolitan area Council meetings). This does of course lead to some confusion on behalf of, us, the members of the public and also leads to a number of protocol issues around who will or will not wear the ceremonial chains at this event and that event.

There is also another interesting PR dynamic that we will all see develop over the next ten months with both Mayoral councillors no doubt keeping one beady eye on the date of the next general election. Councillor Quinlan has already thrown his hat into the ring and I have no doubt the Councillor Cummins may well be contemplating doing the same.

With both of these Councillors in opposing political camps it will be very interesting to see who actually takes the lead in are

a of self generated PR and will the vast pages PR that each will undoubtedly generate be for the benefit of the City and County or the benefit of the individual?

Let us not be fooled as this process has already started and we have begun to see “the chains” being rolled out at this event and that event. The race has begun to stake a claim as a preferred candidate for the next general election and it will be most intriguing to monitor the progress of these two Councillors as they begin to position themselves with their respective party hierarchy.

So we must review and interpret the entire mountains of PR we read and are bombarded with on a daily basis and any messaging contained therein must be scrutinised and understood. We all must look at what we are reading and assess if this is, at the time of reading, relevant to “me” and if it is we will remember the context of what we read and therefore we will be more apt to regurgitate at a later date. If however, what we are reading is of no interest whatsoever to us we will conveniently forget what we have read and have no further interaction with the content of any PR article.

To be able to be interactive with any PR that we come across it is important that it is of relevance to us and perhaps more importantly it is vital that what we read connects with us and therefore plays in some way with our senses. PR will take us through a whole roller coaster of emotions and cleverly written PR will drive home specific messages that will become pertinent to us time and time again.

For Waterford City and County to continue to exponentially grow in importance within ALL of us we must keep reading positive PR messages. Messages that are not about individual self promotion rather messages that are about the greater good of Waterford Inc.

Remember to read between the lines to get the real meaning of any PR.