The math doesn’t add up
Published 10:41 am Wednesday, December 3, 2014
After much head scratching, we must confess to still being somewhat confused by Isle of Wight county attorney Mark Popovich’s decision regarding the publication of the county’s public notices. Popovich, who made the unilateral decision at the start of the new fiscal year beginning on July 1 to discontinue submitting public notices to both The Smithfield Times and The Tidewater News, while continuing to have them published in the Daily Press, made a presentation to the county’s board of supervisors on Nov. 20 detailing the reason for his actions. In it, he stated, “The decision was based upon only two factors: (1) how to limit costs and (2) flexibility.”
It is true that only publishing public notices in one newspaper instead of all three would reduce the amount the county spends on public notices compared to prior years. However, it is also true that the Daily Press costs considerably more to advertise in than the other two newspapers combined. In his presentation, Popovich claimed that for the prior fiscal year ending on June 30, the county had spent $11,271.64 in The Smithfield Times, $26,825.72 in The Tidewater News, and $8,298.48 in the Daily Press. In the spirit of making a fair comparison, however, he did not disclose in his presentation how many notices were actually run in each of the three publications. The Tidewater News requested, and the county attorney agreed, to provide a detailed accounting of each of the notices published in all three newspapers. While as of press time the documents have not yet been completely analyzed to determine the actual numbers, it is clear from initial examination that far fewer notices were run in the Daily Press. We will publish a detailed accounting in coming days.
Regardless of that information, we can break down for you the cost per column inch to publish a public notice in each of the three newspapers: The Smithfield Times charges $9.45; The Tidewater News, which bills by the line ($2.23), would be the equivalent of $17.84 per column inch; the Daily Press charges $69.36 per column inch during the week and $73.22 per inch on Sundays. According to the Popovich presentation, the Daily Press has circulation of 4,000 copies in Isle of Wight on Sundays and 2,300 on Fridays. The combined circulation of The Smithfield Times and The Tidewater News on a single publication day exceeds 5,000.
If his primary reason for reducing the number of newspapers in which the county publishes public notices was to save the county money, then simply eliminating any one of the three would do the job. If he really wants to save the county money, however, it doesn’t take an accounting degree to see which one it should be.