IS IT TRUE June 1, 2012
IS IT TRUE Moody’s has downgraded the bonds that were sold to finance the YUM Center in Louisville to JUNK BOND STATUS?…the reasons given for the downgrade are lower than anticipated revenue from the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) District that was established to partially service the debt AND higher than anticipated operating costs?…the YUM CENTER has enjoyed good top line cash flow with the University of Louisville men’s and women’s basketball teams as the anchor tenants both of whom are in the top 5 in the country in their respective sports?…that UL women’s basketball is #2 in the country for attendance and the men sell out every game in the YUM CENTER?…that the concerts at YUM have been the marquee concerts like Lady Gaga and Rush that also sell out the house at over $100 per ticket?…that the magnificent top line is not enough to keep the debt from being downgraded to JUNK?…that we are wondering how long it will be until the Ford Center debt is up for a grade review and how it will stack up to Louisville?
IS IT TRUE CCO Mole #14 tells us that earlier this year a highly respected and credible investor floated the idea of doing a complete refurbishment of the McCurdy Hotel into a classic hotel that reflects the era in which it was built?…that this refurbishment idea would result in at least the number of rooms that the Winnecke Administration paid $75,000 to learn were needed by Hunden Strategic Partners?…that we hear they were not even interested enough to return the phone call as they are bound and determined to build a new FREEWAY HOTEL next to the Ford Center as that is the only way they think The Centre can be saved?…the financial package needed to get the McCurdy resurrected will be less than will be needed to attract a developer/operator that meets the desired criteria to do a new hotel?…that we also hear that the financial world in downtown Fort Wayne is not all wine and roses as far as the Convention Center and the new Hotels are concerned?…that there is a growing realization in the convention industry that the days of big conventions going to one horse towns is over?…that as conventions go Evansville is and will always be a one horse town compared to places like Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and New York City?
IS IT TRUE that the CCO has done some follow up on the situation with the overturned grave stones at the City of Evansville cemeteries?…that this is a big problem as there are many tombstones turned over?…that in the case of the Oak Hill Cemetery we have confirmed that the gates are not being locked at the end of the day?…we have had a number of calls and emails from concerned citizens letting us know that they have complained about the fact that the gates are not locked only to be dismissed by the cemetery manager?…we also have a contract and it explicitly states in the contract that the owner of the each grave is responsible for making sure that the monument on that grave is maintained?…we had to read that one a couple of times for it to sink in that in most cases the person or people in the grave are responsible to maintain their own monument?…Jay Leno should come to town and put together a batch of jokes on that little nuance?…we bet they have never gotten one phone call from the dead to complain about the condition of the headstones?…there seems to be some humor in everything?…that the laziness associated with not locking those gates is not one of the things that should be laughed about?…that if the Mayor appointed crypt keeper is too darn lazy to lock the gates at night then Mayor Winnecke should find another crypt keeper?…that finally the contract still states that Jonathan Weinzapfel is the Mayor of Evansville?…we guess the City that was willing to hand $5 Million to an out to town business can’t afford new cover pages to accurately reflect who the Mayor is?…that could just be a lazy manager too?
Look at it this way. I took the time to awaken and vote in this year’s primary election. And I was dog tired after having to walk miles to find a voting center. Too tired to mess with grave maintenance when I returned to my casket. The least Chris Cooke can do is have one of his crew reset my head stone that I accidently toppled on my way out of the grave.
Wonder who the Oak Hill “Crypt Keeper” is dating? Maybe this is the key question to how is got this political job.
Oh, isn’t the Oak Hill “Crypt Keeper” a Ward leader in the Democratic party? Isn’t the new Mayor a Republican? Very interesting.
Hey, isn’t that ‘Crypt Keeper’ the leader singer in that group, ‘The Crypt Kicker 5’, who waxed in that song “Monster Mash” ???
Don’t you think that it is time to look into the revenue that is being collected from the downtown TIF and the Burkhardt Road and other TIFs?
Property tax caps, plus abatement and phase-ins must have been foreign concepts to the people who did the estimating of the debt service requirements on the arena bond issue. Now the bond rating will suffer for their negligence.
That is just super, isin’t it! This is just what we need at this point in time! Well, all the right people have been paid, so none of that money is coming back. That leaves who to pick up the pieces and pull this one out of the fire? You guessed it!
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Pitchfork time.
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“…we guess the City that was willing to hand $5 Million to an out to town business can’t afford new cover pages to accurately reflect who the Mayor is?” (CCO)
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Are you sure they are not accurate?
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Ha!
mr. publisher, i know little of ‘moles’, but the lone little birdie i do know just left here. she said my mirth filled missives have SKYROCKETED your viewership. whether this is true or not, i neither know nor care. i just thank you for the chance to share them. what we were really laughing about, though, is she was filling me in on who i’ve really been playing with in this electronic sandbox. jeesus…jeeesus… allright, let’s see if i can get through this with a straight face. which one of you jokers lives at the bottom of a certain stretch of rotherwood? HOWDY,NEIGHBOR!!! yeah, i live at the TOP, as it should be, of that certain stretch. evansville, this is an EYEWITNESS account of an activity that took place at that hodad haven about a year and a half or so ago. they were actually practicing walking while carrying those idiotic signs.hahahahaha you should of seen it, christ, the whole neighborhood was in an uproar. it took them three tries to master a circle.hahahaha. yeah, yeah, about seven of these oafs, not counting the one that was rummaging around in the trunk of a rusted out plymouth.hahaha, when he finally emerged, he was dressed like a psychotic version of that quaker oats guy. wooooo… was the continuous stumbling over the curb part of the act, or did it just come naturally? i swear to GOD you had to see it to beleive it. anyway’s, this is the mob that is constantly complaining about the very drivel that they espouse on this very site. make of it what you will, folk’s, but i ain’t the only one who saw it. well, the finger that know’s how to run this contraption is telling me it’s time for yet another pill, and yet another nap. damn this vile diabetes!! i’ll be back for that twerp who’s holding that jellyfish mayor hostage over his gymnasium fetish later. here’s a hint, pal, elvis took a whiz in thousands of places all over the world. they burned those joints down too.
Jack, traffic has not changed since you began posting. We were getting about 4,000 readers a day before and still are. We do appreciate your efforts to expand our digital footprint.
Hey O.J. next time that little birdie flits o’er to your nest to fill you in on all things CCO and local political drama, tell her I arose from my Long Nap for last year’s city primary and voted for her even though Sleepy Don was more my speed. In fact a troop of us from the Oak Hill Zombie Electorate hobbled over to Vogel School to cast our votes for your little birdie. Tell her none of us could find one of them newfangled voting centers this year though so we just come back to the graveyard and kicked over our tombstones in protest and went back to sleep. Ask her if she can use her influence with Chris Cooke to get someone to set my stone back upright because it’s laying flat right over my laptop and interfering with my WOW service signal.
The Oak Hill crypt keeper looks like the Pillsbury Dough Boy and his boss looks like Steve Erkel all grown up. Wonder if he got that bow tie from former Commissioner Korb?
The Editor should be careful he isn’t comparing Lady Gaga and Rush to the illustrious likes of Bob Seger and James Taylor, who are obviously in the prime of their respective careers and capable of attracting every geriatric within a 3-square-mile radius.
On a serious note, I think everyone with half a brain knows that building projects like the YUM and Ford Centers in this economy aren’t about the greater good or lifestyle improvements, they are about contracts and special interests. Period.
Anyone foolish enough to invest in such bonds deserve to lose their asses, IMO.
Brad:
The bonds are sold and the $126 million has been spent. You and I, through various existing taxes, and no doubt through some additional taxes they will have to add to meet the bond service, are tagged with making the bond payments.
If these Ford Center bonds also see their rating lowered to the status of junk bonds, it means that any attempts down the road to refinance them to a more favorable rate will be impossible.
It would be a big blow to the city’s finances and financial options if these bonds get downgraded.
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Would that mean the City might have to stop building things it doesn’t need and tearing down things it should just sell?
Here is line from Moodys you might want to write down:
“Pursuant to our methodology, the transaction’s current cash flow projections are not consistent with its former rating.”
How is that for a cover your rear statement. They must have stayed up all night to come up with that gem.
That one is from the downgraded EHA bonds, but could equally as well be used when they downgrade the Ford Center bonds.
At some point in time, the adults in the room are going to have to take back control of local government from the clueless and the greed mongers.
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They don’t even have to be adults… Even kids with common sense arithmetic skills could do a better job.
It’s interesting… Through the “if you build it they will come” logic employed by most local government officials, all we really need to do to prosper is keep building more impressive buildings with noble purposes, maybe put a couple more Riverboat Casinos on the water, slap some pretty facades on houses in the “Art District” and keep imposing more creative taxes on the citizens and their activities to pay for it all… Gee, sounds kinda like a Federal Stimulus, except Evansville can’t print it’s own money.
It’s a catch-22 that the very same people with the personal ambition to achieve something “great”, the ineptitude not to do it on their own, and the ego to believe their own personal legacy is more important than providing a fair private business environment are the same ones who naturally gravitate to politics. That’s why even the “conservatives” are a joke.
…and yeah, I realize the bond issue is a done deal, and I realize that taxes will simply be raised in an attempt to buttress up these bad decisions, but that is precisely why the Stadium shouldn’t have been built in the first place.
If sufficient private financing isn’t available for a project like this, it means the economy will not sustain it and it shouldn’t be built. If you’re holding a canary in a coal mine and it dies, that doesn’t mean trudge onward deeper into the abyss. It means find an exit.
As far as Conventions in Evansville go….
Evansville has the misfortune of being pretty much smack in the middle of four larger cities – St. Louis, Louisville, Indy and Nashville.
The same reason big name musical acts usually skip Evansville is the reason Conventions will do the same for the foreseeable future. I69 will only exacerbate that problem as it will be that much easier to catch shows and Conventions in Indy.
Evansville should stop trying to be something it is not. It should learn to elect politicians who realize the limits and potentials of the City and not try to force too much upon it too quickly.
Evansville is like a decent rhythm guitar player who can’t play solos… He sounds ok as long as you don’t ask him to keep up on a Steve Vai song.
Maybe Evansville, instead of trying to squeal away aimlessly on lead guitar at the behest of idiotic, arrogant politicians, should learn to play the drums instead.
“…we also have a contract and it explicitly states in the contract that the owner of the each grave is responsible for making sure that the monument on that grave is maintained?…we had to read that one a couple of times for it to sink in that in most cases the person or people in the grave are responsible to maintain their own monument?”
It’s just as I figured… Either the people buying the plots didn’t read the contract, or didn’t care about the future of their grave markers. What it means is, the deceased person should have made arrangements privately with another entity to come and care for the marker before dying, OR they shouldn’t have accepted that contract and chosen to be buried elsewhere.
Case closed.
If the citizens don’t like the state of the markers, they should take it upon themselves to go out there and right them.
Has this become the Brad Linzy CCO blog? Brad, you are rehashing old material from yourself and others; some of this stuff is from quite awhile back as in “the Ford Center should not have been build because of the debt incurred” and “Evansville should stop trying to be a convention hub like Indy, St Louis, etc”
You seem a bit wound up. I know that Evansville is extremely frustrating and it will probably take more than my lifetime to get most of it straightened out. But I will tell you that it won’t be repaired “perfectly” by anyone’s measure. It will be done by using a series of compromises so that the fix contains repairs that different groups can agree on.
This is new around here but an old concept that elder statesmen are familiar with. It is classy and it works. This would mean for example that your definition of conservative is not the next guy’s definition of that same word. The same for the meaning of liberal. There is no one single point of view for members of the same wing of the same party. So lighten up a little. Start coming to general meetings and offer to be a part of committees. Get a hand in so that you are part of the process to make things better.
Fist off, I’m not sure what you mean about “rehashing old material”. That part of your reply confused me.
I’m not “wound up” or frustrated, just offering my opinions. Take ’em or leave ’em. Most people leave ’em. I’m used to being in the minority.
What you seem to be suggesting with the remainder of your reply is that the best thing government officials should do is compromise to get things done. I fail to see how that’s really a revolutionary approach considering both sides of the “debate” usually are only arguing over how best to overspend and overtax. Group A wants to overspend on this, while Group B wants to overspend on that. I’d suggest the exercise of some small government principles would be preferable to the compromise you’re suggesting.
I agree with you on the definitions of “conservative” and “liberal” though. No one seems to know what either of them really mean. For instance, I’d probably be described as a “classical liberal” and a “paleo-conservative” in the same breath, and both would be accurate.
So does the City have a list of the indigent dead and knowledge of whether they could be Vet’s or Masons?
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