Moy Valley Resources has won a tender competition for a three month contract valued at €10,000 (including VAT ) to prepare a marketing and promotions plan for Ballina. The members of Ballina Town Council were informed of the news at the October monthly meeting of the authority this week, by town manager Paddy Mahon. There was some surprise among a number of councillors who had assumed that the council would appoint an individual to the post using funding they had set aside in their budget for this year.
Mr Mahon told the members that the council had run a tender competition for the project and that Moy Valley had won the tender competition. The project will see a four person team, including the CEO and a marketing manager, work on the project and complete a marketing and promotions report for the town. Mr Mahon also told the members that he could see the potential for this type of project to be expanded across the whole of north Mayo, if the funding was available and different stakeholders came on board.
Cllr Mark Winters said: “This is something that I have been calling for, for a long time. It did take me by surprise the direction that the manager has chosen to go with this, but I can see and understand why he has done this. We need to have something that is strategic and long-term to plan ahead. But we still in the future need a full time person or consultant to be working on this kind of thing.” Cllr Gerry Ginty said: “What we’re getting for the money could be very good value indeed and we should look at linking up with places like Enniscrone and west Sligo which are natural hinterlands of Ballina, going on to promote this area as whole also.”
The majority of the councillors stated that their assumption was that an individual would be appointed to the role, but in explaining how the decision came about, Mr Mahon told them: “When we went to tender, we didn’t know would we get an individual or a group. We had a number of individuals apply through the tender process also. The concept of a fully rescourced officer is something that we would like to see, but we can’t do it by ourselves.”
