The Mineral Wells City Council unanimously selected marketing firm Black Dog Designs as the city’s rebranding agency to create a new logo and slogan following an extensive review process, according to Communications and Marketing Manager Brittany Brown. The agency was chosen from almost 30 submissions received after the RFP closed February 28th.
“We actually ended up with 28 submissions, which is crazy,” Brown said, noting the proposals ranged from 20 to 90 pages in length. “They were anywhere from, I would say, 20 to one of them was 90 pages long that we had to sift through.”
Brown explained the selection process involved a review committee that included council members and city staff.
“We met the first time on March the 4th to start going through all of the proposals that we received. In that meeting, we narrowed it down to five, and then we narrowed our list down a little bit further to three,” she said.
Black Dog’s bid came in significantly under budget, with Brown highlighting their work with Lake County, California, which underwent a similar economic journey to Mineral Wells.
“They don’t just apply for any RFP that comes across their desk. They fully vetted Mineral Wells and decided if we were even a community that they were interested in working with before they ever even submitted anything,” Brown explained.
“And they fell in love with Mineral Wells already, so I think they’ll be a really good fit for us.”
The rebranding will be comprehensive, not just a new logo.
“They really, really want to focus on our history, but also balancing that with our bold vision for the future,” Brown said. “Their objective is to create a compelling voice, tagline, messaging framework, and visual identity.”
Brown emphasized that community input will be crucial to the final design selection.
“They will give us three initial concepts that will be reviewed by city stakeholders and those initial concepts will also be presented to the community,” she said.
“They will do a couple different surveys, one for residents, one for businesses, and the community will actually get to see the logo designs that they’ve presented us, have a say in those designs, and then they will take that feedback and they will use that to kind of finalize the logo concepts.”
Other Meeting Highlights
Fire Chief Ryan Dunn delivered positive news about the department’s staffing levels.
“We are fully staffed. It’s the first time in a very long time. We have 13 paramedics and two more in school,” Dunn said as he thanked council for addressing his departments staffing issues.
He detailed ongoing efforts to secure grant funding, noting meetings with Lexipol, a professional grant writing firm with a 54% success rate on federal grants.
“Lexipol did give us a few quotes that it costs approximately $3,000 for them to write the narratives for us if we provide the analytical data,” he said.
Dunn also highlighted collaborative initiatives with Palo Pinto General Hospital on mental health education.
“We met with the mental health process and education providers. This was between police, fire, Pecan Valley, MHMR, PPGH, all the clinics,” he explained.
“We’re going to be meeting in April to kind of get a better algorithm chart or flow chart put together to see who can do what to help these people in times of need.”
In other business, the council approved a final plat for an 18-home housing development on Southeast 25th Ave called “The Dwellings.”
The council also reviewed plans for accepting ownership of a recently constructed dog park at 116 Northwest 4th Street, currently owned by Crazy Water Hotel and developed through fundraising by a recent Leadership Mineral Wells class, City Manager Jason Weeks indicated the donation agreement would be finalized and brought back for approval at the next council meeting.
In an unusual reversal of procedures, the council began the meeting and entered into executive session, appointing Kelli Buschow and Troy Huseman to the city’s Board of Adjustments before proceeding with the rest of the agenda in regular session.
The next regular session for the city council is April 1.
