In a series of emails regarding the release of the data requested by City Councilman John Friend by the Office of Mayor, the City County Observer has learned that the Mayor’s office and the Evansville Department of Metropolitan Development are satisfied with the due diligence that has been done already and are eager to move ahead with approval of the $37.5 Million grant to HCW?

Councilman Friend however has called for a more comprehensive vetting procedure and has formally asked the Mayor’s office for a “grant application” package more typical of firms that conduct real world due diligence. The Office of the Mayor with the awareness that a super majority (6 or 7) of the Evansville City Council agree with Councilman Friend that real due diligence needs to be completed prior to a vote is not only cooperating with Councilman Friend’s request but is encouraging HCW to cooperate as well.

Council members Jonathan Weaver and Missy Mosby have gone on record all along that they will support the deal as it is and as it has been vetted to date echoing the sentiments of the Office of the Mayor. Councilman Weaver rather than favoring the additional vetting fired off a couple of contentious emails questioning the decision to hire Crowe Horwath to assist in the vetting process accusing Councilman Friend and City Council President Connie Robinson doing a behind closed doors deal to make that choice.

Councilman Weaver has a point that this decision was not made in a public forum and the details of the costs are not known. This being the case and the fact that a super-majority of the City Council support vetting doing this publicly can only lead to a further delay in taking a vote. The first opportunity to have an open discussion on hiring a 3rd party to conduct the vetting is next Monday’s City Council meeting pushing an actual up or down vote on the hotel further into the future.

IS IT TRUE September 3, 2013

IS IT TRUE City Councilman and Chairman of the Finance Committee John Friend, CPA has released his list of things that need to be made available to properly VET the deal that Mayor Winnecke and the Evansville Redevelopment Commission have made with HCW of Branson, MO to develop a hotel complex in downtown Evansville?…Councilman Friend took it a step further and also issued a protocol for VETTING that includes 20 steps?…it is now up to the Mayor’s office to respond and provide Friend with whatever they have and to gather up the other items in the instance that they do not have what Friend has asked for?…with a 20 step process and some very sophisticated analysis that needs to be done it is all but impossible to do this by the scheduled vote next Monday night?…keeping the information in committee until the VETTING has been completed is Councilman Friend’s prerogative and may actually make the passage of some deal for a hotel a higher probability?…one thing for sure is that if the Mayor’s dog and pony shows had secured 5 “AYE” votes the response to Councilman Friend’s request for information for VETTING would have been met with the same silence it has so far?…this could have started in early August if the Winnecke Administration and HCW would have only cooperated with the justified requests of the Chairman of the City Council’s Finance Committee?…it seems as though there has been contempt for the City Council coming from the Mayor’s office until they finally have accepted that they need to provide this to get closer to what they want?…there are only 2 or 3 members of the City Council locked in to an “AYE” vote based on the dog and pony shows?…it takes 5 to tango?

IS IT TRUE there is an allegation going around that certain officers of the Dunn Hospitality Group have put the Museum on notice that their charitable donations will cease if the Museum board and staff openly support the granting of $37.5 Million for a new downtown convention hotel?…we have not confirmed that this is true but would like to discuss the relationship between charities and their large donors?…large donors in nearly every case are people or corporations of significant wealth who for their own reasons choose to give money to charities?…charities such as the Museum and many others are dependent on the generosity of private contributions?…Dunn Hospitality has been very clear that it is their well researched belief that subsidizing a competitor will hurt their business which will necessarily lead to the diminishment of their wealth, their profits, and their cash flow?…the boards of directors of Museums and other charities need to realize that when they make the conscious choice to support programs that hurt their large donors that those large donors can be expected to be disappointed and are fully within their rights to withhold future donations?…charities need to get off of their idealistic high horses and avoid biting the hands that feed them?…if the allegations about the Museum and Dunn are indeed true, who could blame Dunn Hospitality for cutting the Museum from their philanthropic budget?

IS IT TRUE that the closest Division 1 NCAA football team to Evansville, the Louisville Cardinals are expected to win all of their games in 2013?…after dismantling the SEC powerhouse Florida Gators in last year’s Sugar Bowl the Cards have been ranked in the top 10 for the first time ever at the beginning of the season?…pundits are saying their schedule is too weak to be considered for the National Championship game and they have a point, but the missing piece that is not widely discussed is that the Louisville strength of schedule is better than either #2 Ohio State or #3 Oregon?…it will be interesting to see how things work out for Louisville if they go 12 – 0 with the pollsters and the computer rankings?…it was November 13, 1948 that the University of Evansville Purple Aces defeated the Louisville Cardinals in a football game by a score of 18 – 6?…the rise of the Cardinals and the disappearance of the Aces from football playing schools is one of the symptoms of the difference in a city with a goal, focus, a plan, and commitment of its citizens when compared to one that does not?…imagine the possibility that if Evansville would have done things more like Louisville that there could have been 56,000 people in the stands last Sunday to watch a 49 – 7 victory over a gridiron foe?

IS IT TRUE that August was the highest traffic month for the CCO for any non election month since we began counting our traffic using Google Analytics?…our traffic is now solidly above a Million per year and the unique visitors from Vanderburgh County are well over 100,000 per year?…this is about 400% higher than when our counting started in October of 2010?