The Grants Pass City Council on Wednesday contracted out tourism promotion, effectively eliminating the jobs of two city employees in the process and hiring a company owned by the advisory panel that recommended the move.

The three-year contract is for $290,000 per year and was awarded to Media Makers, a video production company owned and operated by Jon Bowen, owner of Roux 26 and Jimmy’s Classic Drive-In restaurants.

The contract calls for Bowen’s company to staff the Grants Pass Downtown Welcome Center, function as a liaison with downtown businesses, produce the annual Art Along the Rogue street painting event and generally market the city through publications and electronic media.

According to city records, only four of 11 members of the city’s Travel and Tourism Advisory Committee recommended Media Makers Ñ but that was more support than was received by any other potential contractor. Bowen is on the tourism committee, although he recused himself when the recommendation vote was taken.

Not all committee members were in attendance when the recommendation vote was taken, minutes of the meeting show, and some members abstained. The Grants Pass & Josephine County Chamber of Commerce was among those that unsuccessfully sought the contract, along with local resident Jes Webb’s Apple Box Marketing & Media.

During Wednesday’s meeting, several audience members told the council that other marketing companies would have applied for the contract, had they known it was up for bid. The city advertised the contract in the Daily Courier and on the city’s website, and notified various agencies, according to Assistant City Manager David Reeves, who said council members appeared to want a locally connected company.

City tourism employee Dayna Sandberg, who will soon be out of a job, asked why the city would want to fix something that’s not broken.

“The city has been marketed superbly for the past 15 years,” Sandberg told the council during Wednesday evening’s meeting.

She conceded the move might save the city “a dollar or two” in wages and benefits, but contended that “the marketing of the city will suffer, which will in turn make tourism suffer.”

A performance audit completed for the city last year by Sjoberg Evashenk Consulting was mixed.

The auditors reported that while the city’s marketing efforts “observed generally positive trends in recent years,” the city was “unable to evaluate its return on investment because it does not adequately track its performance.”

“More importantly, however, it has not established a clear vision of what it wants to achieve through its investment in economic development and tourism promotion,” the auditors said.

Sandberg said she had not had an evaluation in six years, and that the two supervisors she had in the last six years “really had no clue what it was that Kerri (Walters) and I did for tourism.”

Councilor Jim Williams was the lone council member to vote against Bowen’s Media Makers. “I don’t think he’s capable,” Williams said after the council meeting.

City Manager Aaron Cubic said Bowen’s references were checked, including three local and one client of 21 years associated with the Conrad Hilton Foundation, for whom Bowen made videos, newsletters and instructional materials.

“All of them were glowing,” Cubic said.

Reach reporter Shaun Hall at 541-474-3813 or shall@thedailycourier.com