IS IT TRUE? June 28, 2011
IS IT TRUE that the Evansville City Council has its drawers in a bundle about the vetting process that the City of Evansville has been applying to the downtown Convention Hotel project?…that for the first time in the four years that this fiasco has been playing out that some members of the Evansville City Council are flexing the muscles that they were elected to flex to ask the most fundamental of questions regarding the viability of downtown hotel developers?…that the most long awaited quote of “we will not take anyone’s word for it, we need to see some proof†finally came out of the mouths of at least a couple of the elected members of the Evansville City Council?…that the Evansville City Council brought this conundrum upon themselves several years ago when they relinquished the budgetary responsibility for the MLK entertainment complex to the Evansville Redevelopment Commission?…that this was done by resolution in August of 2009?
Link to TV Report of aggravated City Council members:
IS IT TRUE that the City County Observer opposed the budgetary responsibility being placed in the hands of appointed officials as opposed to elected officials?…that if one were to search the archives of any of Evansville’s mainstream media that one will find that this is true?…that if the Evansville City Council would have retained the responsibility that they are elected to provide that the ruckus that is being raised by several Council members right now over the failed vetting process could have been avoided?…that the Weinzapfel Administration used the resounding political victory over a non-candidate in 2007 to create the illusion of a mandate?…that this illusion of a mandate sent a wave of fear through the members of the Evansville City Council that prevented them from mustering the courage to question practices that should have been under scrutiny all along?…that the bag that the citizens of Evansville may be left holding is the end result of this illusion of mandate that was used to create voting block on the Evansville City Council that could not be overcome by independent thinking members?
IS IT TRUE that we wonder if a financial rabbit will be pulled from the hat of anyone before the expiration date of the contract between Woodruff Hospitality LLC and the Evansville Redevelopment Commission?…that if there is a rabbit in the hat that any of the next three days would be the time to ruffle up the sleeve and pull the rabbit out?…that we wonder if there will be a news conference with all of the confidence, vim, an vigor of the announcements of Browning, etc. that we have been treated to on Thursday June 30, 2011 to announce that the vetting process and the RFP have failed (if it indeed does fail)?…that opening a new RFP if that is indeed necessary is something that should not give the appearance of selective authorship?…that if this is the course of action that must be taken that it should be a respectable period to draw other parties into the process?…that the citizens of Evansville have waited this long for a developer to be chosen by an effective process and that we can wait another month or so until an effective process is designed?…that in 2050 no one will remember the bumbling of 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011?… that it is time to reset the clock on the downtown Convention Hotel?
IS IT TRUE that in late July and early August there is a very high probability that we will be having the exact same discussion about the McCurdy Hotel project?…that even the members of the City Council that have been in the solid voting block for anything and everything that the Weinzapfel Administration has demanded seem to understand that things should have and could have been done better?
IS IT TRUE that we also have lost count of the number of members of the Evansville Redevelopment Commission that have been cycled through during the last 7 years?…that we think that number is now up around 15?…that it would be interesting to investigate exactly what the departed members of the ERC think about their departure and about their service on this commission that controls such a large amount of the budget of the City of Evansville?…that other media outlets should be asking these questions too?
CCO: Can you post the resolution under which the City Council relinquished budgetary responsibility for the”MLK entertainment complex” to the Evansville Redevelopment Commission ? I can find nothing like that in August 2009. However, I did find this report dated September 14, 2009 in which the City Council passed a resolution for a cap “on what the ERC can spend”:
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2009/sep/14/city-council-weigh-1275-million-arena-cap/
I didn’t know the CCO existed back then, but if there was advocacy for keeping the oversight with elected officials vs. appointed officials, I would have been your biggest supporter.
I have it from a very reliable source that City Council is getting ZERO reporting on the actual spending on this Project. Hard to enforce a spending cap when the spenders won’t tell you what they’re spending ! Brings into focus City Council members having to resort to Freedom of Information Act requests to get information (good grief !), and the anger over the Browning and (soon to be) Woodruff hotel debacles is not surprising.
That would be Resolution No. C-2009-20 and there was the ERC equivalent 09-ERC-40. The CCO was printed back then and many records have been lost. The two resolutions should be available at the Clerks office. I can’t find them in the CCO archives but there was some turmoil that resulted in some lost records before I was contracted in. Will post when found.
Here is the link to ERC resolution 09-ERC-40 (August 4, 2009) which is a resolution that authorized the issuance of bonds for the Arena. No mention in this very brief minutes of any “passing of the torch” or relinquishing control of the budget from City Council to ERC. Then again, the ERC minutes are a travesty, so perhaps this important event went unreported ???
http://www.evansvillegov.org/Index.aspx?page=277
I saw that. 09-ERC-40 is supposedly a 23 page document and has been referred to that way in a 8/13/2009 print edition of the CCO. I have a copy of it (the CCO) but it is too soiled to scan so I may create a new article of paraphrases from it.
Six months before Weinzapfel leaves office a majority of city council members have an epiphany that maybe they could have done a better job as stewards of the taxpayers dollars?
To hell with the whole bunch.
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