Loudon County chooses company to

Loudon County Commission has approved a company to build a new website for the county.

The Oct. 7 meeting agenda included an item for commissioners to consider providing funding for a company called Smarketing. However, they ultimately went with Quillen Marketing, a firm that’s owned by Commissioner Rosemary Quillen’s son, Kipper Quillen.

Before the vote, Thomas Lewis, the county’s IT director, was asked what each company offered. Lewis said they seemed to offer the same functionalities such as tools, plugins, security, backups and ADA compliance — but Quillen Marketing would be much cheaper.

Smarketing’s proposal estimated the cost for the design and development of the new website at $16,000 with a monthly retainer fee of $750 for ongoing support.

Quillen Marketing’s proposal — obtained by a records request — listed the website design, development and training at $0 with a $130 monthly fee for up to one hour of website edits per month. The document stipulates that unused time doesn’t roll over and additional edits are billed at $85 an hour.

“It’s hard to turn down basically free,” Lewis said.

AN ‘ABOVE BOARD’ DEAL

Commissioner Van Shaver later echoed that sentiment. He also stressed that the deal was above board, regardless of the Quillen connection.

“It’s hard to beat free,” Shaver said. “But the gentleman that does this is Commissioner Quillen’s son, which I’m fine with, but I just want that set out front before we get this done and somebody says, ‘Holy cow, I just found this out.’”

Commissioner Gary Whitfield said that in meetings, Kipper seemed very professional and capable of doing the job.

“Look, I respect Mrs. Rosemary Quillen but I’m going to hold her son to the same standard that I would hold Smarketing … I asked for a five-year agreement, I asked for a 30-day notice — out,” Whitfield said. “If this thing comes out and it doesn’t work, we’re leaving.”

Quillen Marketing has “clients ranging from Northeastern University in Boston to an executive search firm in Europe,” according to the proposal. The firm was founded in Lenoir City in 2018.

Commissioner Quillen said she has stayed out of things, adding that her son would too if there were a problem.

“I would never do anything unethical,” she said. “But I do know my son has a great business, he’s lived here his whole life … and like we said, he is doing this free — a free service to Loudon County because he loves the community.”

According to Lewis, all the documents on the current website — which has long been criticized for not being kept up to date — will be available on the new one.

“How happy will you be to be done with the old system?” Shaver asked.

Lewis blew out a stream of air.

“Very much,” he said.

Whitfield had put forth a motion for the body to choose Quillen Marketing to start on the website “ASAP.” The vote passed, with Commissioner Quillen abstaining.

A date for when the new website will be live isn’t yet known.

According to the delivery timeline included in Quillen Marketing’s proposal: “On average, it takes 2-5 weeks to design the website if we are receiving timely responses from your team. Once approved, our development process is an additional 2-5 weeks.

“Due to the scale of this project, our delivery is expected to range from 2-5 months, heavily influenced by your responsiveness and the number of revisions needed.