December 16, 2008
ROSWELL - The Roswell Beacon failed in its attempt to stop City Council from awarding the contract for legal ads Dec. 15, and has dropped its lawsuit against the City Council and the Roswell Neighbor.
Beacon publisher John Fredericks was in court earlier in the day to try to block the Roswell Council from awarding the contract for advertising bids for city work, proposed rezoning and other items requiring legal advertisement.
The Beacon had the contract for nearly two years when Frederick decided as a business model the Beacon should become a Sunday newspaper and changed the release date of the weekly from Thursdays. Roswell City Attorney David Davidson came across case law in Georgia which held that legal advertisements posted in a Sunday newspaper were not valid, as it is a religious holiday.
Fulton Superior Court Judge Gail Tusan denied the Beacon's request for a temporary restraining order, saying the city had the right to follow the advice of its legal counsel.
"I'm satisfied. We had our day in court," said Fredericks. "We are not shy about using the courts to hold governments' feet to the fire, especially when it comes to the issue of transparency."
That cleared the way for the city to award the bids at the Dec. 15 meeting.
There were two remaining bidders, the Roswell Neighbor and the Alpharetta-Roswell Revue & News. Council unanimously awarded the contract to the Neighbor despite a 25 percent higher bid, $12.95 a column inch versus $9.70 from the Revue.
Based on the city's estimates of the amount of yearly legal advertisement, the Neighbor bid will cost taxpayers more than $78,000 a year or $19,000 more than the Revue bid. The Neighbor delivers to 5,500 more households in Roswell than the Revue (19,700 versus 14,200).
Mayor Jere Wood said while he would be happy with either newspaper, it was his opinion that in these hard economic times the city go with the low bidder.
But council made it a top concern that the legal ads contract would be heavily weighted toward the newspaper that distributed the most homes in Roswell. That is the Neighbor Newspaper.
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