by:  Diane Benjamin

I’ve posted a number of stories about the Coliseum.  The Coliseum saga exemplifies why government isn’t capable of running a business.  Who is looking out for taxpayer dollars?

The Coliseum was built and turned over to a private company to run.  CIAM posted an income statement that posed more questions than answers.  CIAM has reported as Income items that were merely reimbursements of expenses they incurred to do events, but they failed to net the expenses against the income before taking their 4% commission.

This post  http://blnnews.com/2014/02/13/one-more-thing-on-the-coliseum/ shows $271,717.57 in Labor income and another $367,711.00 in Merchandise Sales and Sales Taxes collected – total $639,428.57.  It appears from the statement CIAM paid itself 4% on those items even though they aren’t REAL revenue – total $25,577.14 they aren’t entitled to, unless the City thinks these are Revenue.  That would be an entirely different discussion, maybe an economics class would help.

From this post http://blnnews.com/2014/02/13/more-coliseum-nonsense/ CIAM is legitimately taking 10% of the sales of Sponsorship, Premium Seating, and Naming Rights.   But, then they are taking another 4% because it’s Revenue.  I don’t think the intent of the contract was 14% – that’s $908,047.03 x 4% = $36,321.19

With just a cursory look at the CIAM statement I found $61,898.33 CIAM wasn’t entitled to.

Finally, this post counters the claims made about how great the Coliseum is for the community:  http://blnnews.com/2014/02/13/coliseum-etc-citizen-theft/  Concessions also need to be addressed.  They are unaudited.  If the abuses mentioned above are right out in the open, is the City getting anything close to it’s fair share of concession revenue when nobody is looking?

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