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| I can not believe that people are buying this. |
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| "Greensboro has a GOING Problem" Unfortunately, it can be solved by some pill. Greensboro is GOING back into the back pockets of its citizens to fund projects that would never be funded if it were not for the government's ability to TAX and SPEND. There are some Bonds that "deserve" funding; but not by taxing the public. The Auditorium at the Coliseum - NOPE. The coliseum needs parking more than a 2,500 seat auditorium fix-up that will sit empty 300 days or more a year. There are BIGGER and BETTER church auditoriums that are used just on Sundays and occassionally Wednesdays. Get a CLUE - work a deal. Civil Rights Museum - it's one of Greensboro's TRUELY local opportunity. It's time will come; but not right now. Get rid of the Skip & Earl Award - they're contributing to the mistrust that prevents people from giving more money. Swim Center - wrong place. Downtown needs a water park according to DGI a while back - put it downtown in the middle - a really long river like facility. Everything else is a function of setting aside money. You annex - you build to cover. You grow, your tax base grows to cover. Nuf said. | ||
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| I'm kind of in a bind here as there are two sides (or more) to me: 1 - Minor League Hockey Fan 2 - Fan of Privatizing the Coliseum The coliseum recently announced that they lost less money than previously expected. Sounds like balancing your check book every so often instead of whenever you spend money. To me that sounds as of there is a management issue - it's not Matt Brown - this time. It's the City Council - they are ultimately responsible for our tax dollars. They hire the City Manager - he hires everyone else. The Council often passes the buck - but they are ultimately responsible. When the coliseum looses money, I wonder how they can lose money. Where is it going? Why are we losing money when everything at the coliseum costs somebody money? If the coliseum was a business, it would have closed many years ago. The City Council and the Rah-Rah Chorus talk about how the coliseum attracks interest in Greensboro. I agree that it does; but when these interests become real visitors - the curtain is pulled back and the real coliseum is shown. The coliseum area is in a real need for renewal; probably as much as south downtown. But that's another issue. | ||
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Saturday's (08/05/06) News & Record's front page demonstrates why the Coliseum's War Memorial Auditorium Bond is a loser. Westover Church renovates their facility for $28 Million. They do more with less money. So where is the extra money going? Or who is in charge? The sad part os the line: And if the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra needs a temporary home during the proposed upgrade of War Memorial Auditorium? There's a hydraulic stage lift that lowers a section of the pulpit to a ground-level docking area big enough to unload a semi-truck. Why not just close the coliseum's tax hole and let the Symphony play at the church. The church gets rental fees and the citizens of Greensboro are saved a bond issue. | ||
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| Last week, I had a letter in the News & Record published regarding the coliseum. Two items. I am not opposed the the ACC Tourneyment; I just don't think the tax payers should foot the bill. (See below). Second, they edited out $20 Million Dollars. The coliseum is asking for $36 Million this year and Matt Brown is ready to propose an ADDITIONAL $20 million next year (according to the News & Record article. As for the $130 Million the ACC Tourneyment brings into the market, I really have serious concerns about that number. If you do the math, the number of hotel rooms booked (and etc.), that runs into about $500 a person spending per year (about right). Only problems is very little of that is money spend on LOCAL businesses - it's leaving town as fast as the Thursday play in games. At best we might see $6.5 Million in tax revenue (assuming all persons coming to the games will stay in hotel/motels in the city limits and subject to the coliseum reveue tax. Oh, heck, throw in another 10% for other taxes as well. So over the next 10 years the ACC Tourneyment will return roughly $20 Million in tax revenue; for that we plan to spend $56 Million in bonds and will have spent upwards of $10 Million operating losses and $140 Million in debt service to earlier coliseum bonds. Government spending in action. Just think, if we make the coliseum private - we would have $5 Million* in annual tax revenue, $0 in operate losses, $0 on Bond Service. * - That revenue would be from hotel/motel tax that could be used in other areas to improve the city. | ||
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| This week it was announced that the Greensboro Coliseum has been awarded the Men's ACC Basketball Tournament through Matt Brown's final years as a City Employee - assuming that he will gracefully retire with 20 years of "service" to the city. The coliseum also locked in the Women's Basketball Tourneyment for the immediate future - a no brainer for either the coliseum or the ACC because it has room to grow in Greensboro. As many will admit, this is a great honor for the city; however, the Bill is coming due. The city already provides around $14 Million a YEAR in bond payments and operating short-falls to have this facility. You have to search the city budget to see all the various bonds that are being paid off that have benefited the coliseum. The operating losses are in the $2 million range (un-audited). This year, we are being asked to add another $36 Million to add 225 seats to the auditorium, as well as some other improvements. As one person pointed out early in the Coliseum Bond process, their church built a larger performance facility for 1/3 the cost of the coliseum's proposal. Now, Matt Brown is saying that he will come back and ask for another $20 Million. That's $56 Million before the ink is wet on the ACC Tourneyment Contract. We have a antiquated facility - especially when you visit newer facilities in Raleigh and Charlotte. Greensboro can never make enough improvements to compete on equal ground. Now is the time to bail out. We have a facility with a good advance booking and national exposure. It's time to revisit Matt Brown's proposal to take the facility private. That will take it off the public expenses and place it on the tax rolls. It will also give us better drawing power as the coliseum will be free to negotiate as other private facilities - freed from the constraints of government. | ||
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Recently I attended two Revolution football games in the Greensboro Coliseum. The following week I attended a Grasshoppers baseball game. For several years, every event I attended at the Greensboro Coliseum I could barely hear or understand the public address announcer - ECHL Hockey, af2 Football. I had always thought that it was the coliseum's fault. This week, I realized that I was wrong. The Revolution has hired a public address announcer that is clear spoken and apparently knows how to use the sound system, which includes the proper way to speak into a microphone. Unfortunately, I do not know who this might be - it does not appear to be any of the standard radio people that have dominated the public address positions for the past few years. The Grasshoppers and previous coliseum sporting events use Jim Scott. Jim is an outstanding radio production person, with a great personality and sports background. However, it is now apparent that his radio skills are not applicable to the public address field. Jim is a great asset to any organization because he gives 110% and that might just be the problem. As a public address announcer - Jim's voice is over-modulated and often distorted. It sounds as if he has the microphone attached to his mouth, much like an auctioneer. Only about 25% of everything he says is understandable - possibly due to his style of drawing words out - those words we are eventually able to understand. If you ever hated going to the coliseum because of the sound, you need to give it another shot - at least attend a Revolution game. They atleast employ someone with the skill to utilize the equipment there. | ||
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| I ventured out to the money pit on Lee Street Saturday Night to enjoy an event that the General Public could attend. This was not one of those Wine and Cheese Events that have prices so high that the average citizen could attend. It was the first home game of the Greensboro Revolution, an indoor football team. While parking was $5, tickets also started at $5. The announced attendance was 8,012. It looked a lot more crowded. On Friday, reports of only 1,000 tickets sold convinced the coliseum to save money by short-staffing the concession and ticket stands. This resulted in LONG waits in almost every line in the coliseum. It's a difficult decision to make for the coliseum - do they staff for capacity or for pre-event sales. Once again they failed to understand the public's desire to enjoy a bargain at our city-owned and operated White Elephant. Had ticket prices been a few bucks more (above a movie ticket - which does not charge for parking), the coliseum would have looked like at ACC Tourneyment Thursday or Friday night, when employees out-number paying fans. The coliseum is seriously out-of-touch. That's to be expected as the coliseum leadership ranks in the highest perecentile of city employee pay. Now that they have pretty much farmed the minimum wage employees out to other companies, coliseum staff rarely have the opportunty to press the flesh with a majority of the general public. The cards were stacked against the Revolution; but their owner knows that as long as you can offer cheap entertainment people will come. Hopefully, he will survive with CASH in his hands. | ||
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| The biggest problem with Greensboro as a location for these college basketball games is that people DON'T want to be here if their team is NOT. I am watching the Maryland-UNC-CH Women's ACC Final on TV. Crowd shots show several sections of empty seats. Fans who have gone home. The game probably was a sell-out; but, that's no guarentee that the place was full (even if we don't talk about the 13,000 seats behind the curtain). Unfortunately, there are people who buy tickets and go home when their team does as well. Think about it. Do you blow off your tickets to save $7 on parking and $10 to $20 per person on concessions? You BET! The Women's Tournament will probably set records and Greensboro is definitely a good place for the Women's ACC Tournament. We just need to find out why people don't want to hang around for the final game. I fear a sea of green in the next two weeks. Although today's empty seats are not as bad as previous ACC outings in Greensboro. | ||
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| I'm fairly good at catching phishing and spoofing emails; however, today I got nailed by one of the drug sites. I received an email telling me I had received an electrinic card. The site, link and sender all looked legit. I never thought to check the headers before I clicked the link. Fortunately, it was a drug site and not a trojan or other crap site. I looked at the headers - they were forged POORLY. Oh, well. | ||
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| I was out on I-40 Wednesday and noted the excessive number of road crews removing garbage from the sides of the road. I'm on I-40 several times a week and rarely do I see more than one crew picking up trash. Wednesday, I counted 6 different crews. They were all concentrating on the coliseum exits, I guess they want to put on a good face for the college basketball games. I didn't see them on that day, but the next three weeks is one of the few times you will see those Traffic Alert Signs in operation. Greensboro's signs are part of the coliseum advertising service, unlike signs elsewhere around the state that provide traffic information and Amber Alerts. If you miss these signs in March, they will get turned on again during the golf game at Forest Oaks (GGO or something like that.) | ||
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| Not that anybody is watching, there's an engineer blogging about how it gets here. | ||
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| I normally don't forward these kind of things; but by popular demand. The Greatest Star Wars Figure Ever. My apologies in advance. | ||
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| I am not a smoker; and really could care less about smoking at the coliseum. However, I thought a few points might be necessary. In the old days, smoking was allowed in the concourse. Then the smokers were forced to the back wall of the concourse. Then they were herded to the basement. A few of my smoker friends quit going to coliseum events as a result of their treatment. Other non-smokers quit going because of the concentration of smke at the North end of the coliseum - where the smoke from the smokers herded to the North basement rose into the 2nd and 3rd levels of the North end. Who could have known the smoke rises? During the renovation, the coliseum tested several smoke suspressant systems. One of which was the brand - Smoke Eater. The club where I worked at the time used Smoke Eaters. The distributor that serviced our system installed a system at the coliseum to test. For three weeks his units filtered the smoke from the North end of the coliseum. Unfortunately, a real Smoke Eater solution is a very expensive, high maintenance solution. The coliseum really wasn't interested in a real solution. They claimed it wasn't working. It won't if you prop the doors open that were closed for the design. Oh well, folks who smoke will be herded outside. Their second class treatment will add them to the ever larger growing numbers of coliseum haters. | ||
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The Bryan Foundation recently gave $50,000 to the Greensboro Coliseum - Triad Business News I'm pretty sure that Jim Melvin's contributions and previous positions would certainly put him in any Luxury Suite of his chosing at the ACC Tournament. I just wonder who else he needs tickets for to pour $50K into the money pit on Lee Street. $50K reportily will be used to buy tickets for local students (NOTE: there are no tickets available to the ACC Men's Tornament; however, a few thousand remain for the Women's Tournament and NCAA playoffs.) Also the money will be used for "general" expenses. Can this dump use any more money? Matt Brown will accept as much money as we give him. He excels at getting money. He fails at getting affordable events for the taxpaying public. Does it matter the the tax payers, YES. Does it matter to the City Council - NO. Should it - YES. Life goes on for Greensboro's Highest Paid Employee - Matt Brown. | ||
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| There's been a lot of talk about WXLV-TV and Time Warner regarding broadcast of the Super Bowl this weekend. Sinclair Broadcasting, who owns WXLV, is asking for a cut of the premium that Time Warner charges for the High Definition Tier. But what is High Definition ANYWAY. Doc Searls' talks about it at IT GARAGE You see what the Cable Company and Satellite Company offers is not truely High Definition. It is better definition; but no where near the bandwidth that a True Over The Air High Definition signal offers. To make matters worse, unless the cable or satellite company has access to the signal before the ATSC compression that is eventually broadcast (compression of almost 50 to 1), it is impossible for the cable/satellite company to demodulate and remodulate on their system without SIGNIFICANT degrading of the signal. Consumers have NO way of knowing what they are watching because they can not determinewhat their resolution display is actually. 16x9 is associated with High Definition; but True High Definition is eith 1920 pixels wide by 1080 scan lines OR 1280 pixels by 720 scan lines. That's the two accepted High Definition formats of the 18 accepted digital formations that make up digital television transmission. Now another KICKER - most television sets sold can not reproduce horizonal resolution greater than 1440 pixels wide. Where's the rub?? When you watch television delivered digitally, you are seeing the picture without the transmission artifacts that can degrade as much as 75% of picture. It's the same reason why a DVD looks a lot better than a VHS recording of the same DVD. Now what's the point - There really is none. It's all about CONTENT and what you are willing to PAY. | ||
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| This week, the Big Link is the Linkster Himself. | ||
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| In March, Greensboro whores itself out as colleges not local to Greensboro come to town for games that for the most part are better viewed on television than in person. In an effort to make it appear that this is a community event and not the eqivalent of drunks on a party weekend at the Mustang Ranch, they have created this contest call MAYOR OF TOURNAMENT TOWN, they are hoping to localize this use of our abandoned coliseum facility on Lee Street. Only catch is that they want to to purchase tickets to the ACC Women's Tournament ($18) to enter. (Way down in the fine print, you can enter by visiting the offices of the coliseum without purchasing tickets.) So for our tax dollars of $2 Million, it MAY be possible for one tax payer to experience the only event held at the coliseum that most taxpayers would enjoy having access. However, the contest is open to all who purchase tickets to the women's tournament, so the possiblity that the winner will be from Greensboro is small. | ||
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This week's big link is http://www.greensboring.com/ Ya'll be | ||
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| This Week's Big Link. | ||
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| A friend of mine works very closely with the police department. His view of the Wray situation was 180 degrees from what has been revealed, SO FAR. Which brings me to wonder in a paranoid sort of way, do we know the real issue, like The Troublemaker is pointing us to or is this just a big mess. Knowing humanity, I suspect we only have only skimmed the surface and we haven't seen the end of it. | ||
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