Surf City leaders unanimously agreed to back off any more discussions on hiring consultants to beef up the city’s rebranding efforts — for now — after complaints about the mayor’s choice of contractor. 

It’s a debate that’s gone on for nearly a month after residents and several city council members raised concerns about Mayor Casey McKeon’s proposal to hire a consultant who’s engaged to one of his commissioners to help rebrand the city and implement a film commission. 

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After those complaints, council members narrowly voted to create a closed door committee and allow Councilmen Pat Burns, Butch Twining and Don Kennedy to review a series of proposals to beef up the city’s image and help generate new revenue through things like merch. 

Less than a month later, they asked to dissolve the committee and put any more talks on pause for now, saying the entire debate was now sabotaged by politics. 

“Unfortunately, this whole thing became ugly and political,” Burns said at the council’s Tuesday meeting. “Politics sucks, and I think this was a classic case of it.”

Twining said he felt like most of the issues that were raised by Wolffhaus, the advertising firm the city was looking to contract with, could likely be handled in-house. 

“I came to the conclusion we can probably find internally … people that have the talent and ability to do a lot of that,” Twining said. “I hope to take a lot of the ideas I learned from the Wolffhaus consulting report.” 

Kennedy called the entire process “messy and sticky,” and raised complaints that they weren’t allowed to change their request to have contractors implement a plan in time for Fourth of July merchandise and promotional material. 

McKeon defended Wolffhaus and the original idea for the contract before voting to put it on pause, saying that they need to take “big swings,” to fix the city’s budget, which is currently narrowly balanced. 

“Tragically this opportunity was never given its day in court cause it was attacked,” McKeon said, noting that the owner of Wolffhaus was getting “totally drug through the mud.” 

“I’ll call the question,” said Councilman Chad Williams, who previously brought up a series of concerns with the contract.

Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.