Karen Gay: Business Association should pay for website overages

I’ve attended the last several Town Council meetings primarily to hear what will happen to the Cape Charles by the Bay website. In June, I was encouraged to hear that the Town awarded the contract for the website to the Cape Charles Wave, LLC. In a fair contest, they submitted a bid for $5,300 in contrast to the next closest bid of $9,700—a difference of over $4000. Naively, I thought that the Town had been able to set aside hard feelings created when the Cape Charles Wave online Newspaper voiced opposition to the sale of the former school for $10. What some saw as hard-hitting reporting others saw as inflammatory and inaccurate.

After members of the Cape Charles Business Accociation voiced opposition to the contract award, a stop work order was issued. I support and defend the right of members of the Business Association to speak their minds regarding the contract. I appreciate that in this case, the Town was responsive to citizen complaints.

As I sat in the Town Council Meetings I heard various alternatives no how to maintain the website and respond to social media. To my mind, each of these approaches looked as if it would cost more than $5,300, the cost of the original contract award. The Council agreed that a stakeholder meeting would be necessary to work through the options. As a taxpayer stakeholder I’d like to know the cost of each of the options. If all the alternatives cost more than the original contract bid, who will pay the additional amount? The Town carries a lot of debt and to say that the Town will pay the overage is like saying that my neighbors and I are paying extra when there was already a perfectly good solution. I suggest that any additional cost over $5,300 should be absorbed by the members of the Cape Charles Business Association as they objected to the originally selected vendor. If this is the case, then I lend my wholehearted support to this effort.