Don't Forget the Rubber Chickens

My policy, advocacy, and communication roots run deep – in this case all the way back to about 1980 when I helped win a water system bond election by a very slim margin.

The City of Flagstaff needed to upgrade its municipal water system. The consulting engineering firm, Black & Veatch, put together a plan that outlined $26 million in improvements to the water treatment and distribution facilities. In those days I was hosting a morning radio show, teaching photography in the Evening Division at Northern Arizona University, and shooting occasional freelance photography assignments for magazines and annual reports.

The City contracted with me to put together a brief informational program they could use to promote the bond issue. I prepared a storyboard, shot several hundred 35mm color slides, and wrote a script. These were the days when “technology” consisted of my bag full of camera bodies and lenses and my noisy Kodak Ektagraphic slide projector.

I dove into the project. I crawled through the water treatment plant and climbed the tower for an aerial view. I illustrated the importance of the city’s water system with images ranging from blue jeans in a washing machine to a firefighter coupling a hose onto a hydrant. I wanted to make the city water system a tangible asset instead of an abstract concept. ?I interviewed engineers and city officials for their perspective. I even prepared a cassette recording of the full script, with automatic slide changes. After a couple of weeks of shooting, writing, and editing, the presentation was ready. Over the next few weeks, we hauled our 10-minute slide show all over town and showed it to any group that would give us a time slot. We hit the “rubber chicken circuit” of every service club in town. We answered a lot of questions, and met some resistance. ($26 million was a lot of money in 1980. Still is.)

Finally, the bond election day arrived. It was the only thing on the ballot, which is usually trouble for a bond issue, but we won. When all the votes were counted, we had won by a total of 30 votes.

Let’s do some math and arbitrary extrapolation. We did about 15 presentations to organized groups during the campaign. I like to think that if we converted just one voter per presentation from “no” to “yes” with our outreach program, that effort delivered the 30-vote margin that we saw on election day.

Is there a message or a moral here? I think our effort illustrated the importance of showing up and telling a story. We didn’t turn down any invitations. If we could get a half dozen people in a room, we were there with our noisy slide projector and a couple of humans to answer questions. We made the need for improvements real, as well as the potential consequences of inaction.

For me, it was an enjoyable project. I put in more hours than I was paid for, but the elation of winning a tough fight was a nice bonus.