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1639-26 Politics SUN JAN 13 1985 ED: FINAL SECTION: NEIGHBORS MB PAGE: 12 LENGTH: 37 .43" LONG ILLUST: photo: Cover color: Man holding MIAMI BEACH maps bw: Stuart Newman, Zeke George, Fred Mooke, Al Wolfe SOURCE: DORY OWENS Herald Staff Writer DATELINE: A young starlet MEMO: COVER STORY HAVE THEY GOT A CITY FOR YOU. . . clad in a bikini, ear muffs and wool mittens -- rubs her hands over the flames of a campfire on a white sand beach. She smiles. Shutters snap the winter scene. The shot is published in newspapers across the country with the caption, "It ' s cold on Miami Beach, down to 60 degrees. " In an unprecedented coup, city publicist Hank Meyer brings the Arthur Godfrey Show to the Kenilworth Hotel in 1952 , an event so charged with excitement that more than 60 police officers are dispatched to control the crowd. The telecast marked the beginning of a parade of television and radio shows broadcast from Miami Beach, each with its own stars and attendant celebrities, that lasted for two decades. Today. Tonight. Don McNeal ' s Breakfast Club. Ted Mack' s Amateur Hour. Dave Garroway. Steve Allen. Jack Paar, Perry Como. Kate Smith. Red Skelton. Dinah Shore. Miss USA. Miss Universe. Ed Sullivan. The Beatles. Jackie Gleason. How sweet it was. Miami Beach, which has packaged and promoted itself since the mid- Twenties when publicity meant little more than the distribution of cheesecake photographs, has faded from the spotlight since the mid-Seventies. But there is now a revival of interest in publicity at City Hall. This year the city, the Miami Beach Redevelopment Agency and the Miami Beach Visitor and Convention Authority will spend some $450, 000 on publicity. Local officials aren't interested in resurrecting Meyer' s "Sun and Fun Capital of the World" image. City Manager Rob Parkins sees publicity as a means of shaping the destiny of a fading resort town in transition. "When business is bad you advertise, " he said. The Miami Beach Redevelopment Agency has hired Stuart Newman and Associates to develop a program to attract investors and developers to South Beach. The one-year contract will run $58, 000 . Newman will create an 8 1/2-minute film to show to developers, investors, bankers and insurance company representatives interested in South Beach. The film, whose working title is South Pointe, a New Renaissance in Miami Beach, is due Feb. 5 . The publicist will also develop an investors kit that will include aerial photographs and information on South Beach, and tips on tax advantages and federal grants. The city has hired Scott Ross and Associates, at a cost of $45,500 for three months, to find ways to entice young professionals to move here. Ross has commissioned a St. Petersburg firm to conduct a study of those professional ' s attitudes toward the Beach for $27 , 000. The city recently decided to split its public information office into two departments, public affairs and protocol. The additional cost of the two departments is $164 , 702 . Protocol, budgeted at $73, 385, will take over the ribbon cuttings and presentation of proclamations that have saddled the public information office in the past. Former Public Information Officer Zeke George will head the department with a $42, 000 salary. The new public affairs office is budgeted for $257 , 784 . Fred Mooke, a broadcast journalist for 28 years, most recently with WTVG-TV in Miami, will earn $49, 000 . Mooke ' s chief responsibility is to generate positive stories about Miami Beach. He said last week he will concentrate on promoting South Beach and attempt to induce new business and construction. He will also push Miami Beach as a residential community and a convention location, he said. The Visitor and Convention Authority will pay public relations consultant Al Wolfe $76, 000 to generate stories aimed at rekindling vacationers ' interest in the Beach. Parkins said he believes the money is well spent. He points to the 25 to 30 percent vacancy rate of local apartment buildings, a tax base that declined by 1 .2 percent last year instead of the traditional increase of nearly 5 percent and the city' s goal of stimulating economic development this year. Parkins has the support of most of the City Commission but the $450,000 tab for publicity has prompted two commissioners to complain. On Dec. 19, Commissioners Sidney Weisburd and Alex Daoud voted against creating the public affairs director position. "I was totally in support of getting the message out to the business world that this was the best of times for investors, " Weisburd said. "I wasn 't sure we couldn't do it with what we had. " Daoud argued that Miami Beach is spending too much on publicity, in view of a 26 percent increase in property taxes this year and cuts in services. "I think it ' s a terrible waste of taxpayers ' money. It ' s a duplication of services that could best be handled by one department, " Daoud said. "How can we spend this money when we 're closing down a public library and wanted to cut back on lifeguards? Cleaning the streets and closing down deserted buildings and making it safer for people in their homes will make it easier to market Miami Beach, " Daoud said. All the public relations functions should be combined and conducted by one firm or city department, said Daoud, whose campaign manager, Gerald Schwartz, has previously bid unsuccessfully for the contracts awarded to Ross and Wolfe. Assistant City Manager Dick Fosmoen said the city' s public affairs department doesn 't have the time or expertise to handle special projects such as the promotion of South Beach or studies on how to attract young professionals. "If the department tries to do too many things, it can't do any of it very well, " he said. Other commissioners tend to agree with Fosmoen. "You don' t go to a foot doctor for brain surgery and you don' t go to a probate attorney for criminal representation, " Commissioner Bruce Singer said. "No one firm could handle all this work. " The consultants agree. "People who say 'Lets have one staff doing all ' don' t understand the nature of public relations, " Wolfe said. "Certain people have certain areas of expertise. It ' s like a boutique versus a department store. " The effects of public relations work are difficult to measure, making it easy to criticize and hard to justify. Nevertheless, several city officials were displeased with the work of the public information office under George ' s direction, they said. "I didn't think it worked the way it should, " Parkins said. "Press releases, photographs, the timeliness of material. " Parkins said George spent 75 to 80 percent of his time on protocol functions. "He was saddled with a lot of protocol work and, in all fairness to him, he wasn't trained for public relations, " Parkins said. He denied that the September incident in which Mayor Malcolm Fromberg unknowingly presented a city medallion to a former sergeant in the German SS caused the restructuring of the departments. He said, however, the reorganization should help avoid similar mistakes in the future. Parkins has asked George to prepare a manual of operating procedures calling for background investigations on people presented to the mayor who are unknown. "There ' s accountablity now, " Parkins said. George, a former code enforcement officer, has been ill and absent from work since before Christmas but is expected to return Monday. He refused to return repeated phone calls from The Herald. Commissioner Singer said that once the protocol department is in place, he expects the new public affairs office to take on more of the work now contracted to consultants. "Once the department is formed, it will be able to handle more in-house work. I would like to see us develop a more professional capability so we can do more in-house, " Singer said. Mooke, the city ' s new public affairs director, agrees that his department will be able to handle more of the work now sent to public relations consultants. While his department may still have to contract for specialized tasks such as the study on how to entice young professionals to move to Miami Beach or film presentations on South Beach, Mooke said, he wants to "cut out the middleman, " public relations consultants hired to oversee the projects. "That won't be necessary in the future, " Mooke said. "This is the last of it. " ADDED TERMS: MB public relation END OF DOCUMENT.