A Contractor Hired to Rebuild Victor's Trust Withdrew His Pending Contract Over His Own Op-Ed

VICTOR — A communications contractor the city hired to help rebuild public trust asked the City Council on July 22 to drop a pending communications contract, after an op-ed he had written became the center of the meeting where he came to present that work.

At an earlier meeting the council voted to engage communication specialists for "not to exceed $10,000" to build what the city calls a strategic-narrative and communications framework. The communications contractor, Mike Geraci, presented the framework's deliverables on July 22. He had not sought the job, he told the council; the city approached him.

The op-ed had run weeks earlier, while Geraci says he was between contracts and not working under the city's. Councilor Amy Ross pressed him on how it squared with a scope she described as not designed to advocate for a specific outcome, and pointed to the same posture in the phased implementation plan he was presenting, which said his tactics were meant to fill "the information vacuum that manufactured outrage and corrosive cynicism rush to occupy." She called that language "extremely offensive" to residents who had lost trust in the city. Geraci said he wrote the op-ed as a private citizen. "I stand by what I wrote," he told the council.

Several residents used the public-comment period to object, most of them among the city's persistent critics. Carol Nowakowski told the council the op-ed "mentioned my name many, many times" and accused her "of things that I have never done." Cindy Regal said Geraci "wasn't under contract when he wrote that opinion" yet was presenting the results of that contract the same night. Two other commenters spoke in favor of the city pursuing a communications effort.

"We should rescind the proposal for the communications engagement," Geraci said when the comment period ended, proposing to keep the strategic-narrative work sessions under his existing contract. He offered to draft a job description for a city public information officer instead. Pulling the new contract, he said, would push the city's communications work "forward without having me as the baggage and the distraction."

The council took no formal vote. Councilor Ross said she did not think action was required, and the meeting moved on with the pending communications contract set aside and a PIO job description in its place.

The city had built the engagement around restoring public confidence during a year of turmoil, from a mayoral resignation under a recall threat to an unresolved dispute with Driggs over wastewater. The effort to script that recovery ended at its first full airing.

What to watch: Geraci agreed to draft a public information officer job description for the council's review; the strategic-narrative work sessions continue under his existing contract. The council's next regular meeting is Aug 12.

Sources

• Victor's recall reflects a culture of suspicion, not governance
• Victor Strategic Narrative Framework
• Victor Communications Phased Implementation Plan