By: Diane Benjamin
The local purveyor of government propaganda has reported VenuWorks lost $674,000 in the 7 months since they took over.
The only reason this story is out now is because Tuesday night the Coliseum Executive Director will make a presentation to the Council.
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Side note: This is also Tuesday’s agenda:
2017 ends 4/30/17. The 2016 reports still haven’t been issued!
The game must be: Hales Hide the DATA with Tari’s blessing!
I hear Hales is looking for a new job.
Good Luck David – Google will destroy your chances with stories like this.
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Back to government propaganda:
The bird-cage liner compares the VenuWorks loss to what CIAM did in 2016 – a $500,000 loss for the year ended 4/30/16. Refer to above! Nothing for 2016 is posted on the City website, including the Coliseum. Is Hales handing out data he wants reported?
Is a $500,000 loss what CIAM reported or what the auditors reported? Long time readers know CIAM’s numbers are fiction, so is the actual loss much bigger? It’s a secret because the City doesn’t think you have a right to know the results of the audit you paid for! Very transparent Tari! They also claim the audit isn’t done. Why is that Tari? Need a couple more years? (Ever feel like you don’t live in America anymore?)
The rag then recaps the losses reported for various years. How did they get close in 2009 and blow the other two years? Did the City give them faulty data?
(The audited numbers below do not include depreciation – which they should!)
2015 per the Pantagraph: <$500,000> Per the Auditors: <677,480> http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=9338
2009 per the Pantagraph: <$636,655> Per the Auditors: <647,519> Page 52: http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=2069
2010 per the Pantagraph: <84,303> Per the Auditors: <263,084> Page 49: http://www.cityblm.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=2068
The Pantagraph also claims VenuWorks is doing a lot of upgrades – you paid for them. They left that part out!
With the money wasted at the Coliseum, the City could easily build and staff that much-needed NE fire station. Wait until the bill comes in for the outside elevator and replacing the signage!
The story also claims the City is now paying less because the construction bonds have been refinanced. You got a tax increase to pay the original bonds, so where is that extra money going? Obviously, not back to you!
One more:
From the 2017 budget presentation – here’s your new fire station that won’t happen because Renner priorities aren’t the same as citizens! The $1.4 million land purchase is the North Main property Renner obviously has plans for but you aren’t allowed to know what they are. Yep, very transparent Tari.
Thinking voting in local elections doesn’t matter? Ha!
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Why does it make any sense to continue to pour this kind of money into this facility? Why not just sell it? Someone might want to buy it?
Somebody could be that stupid?
It is little hard to comprehend why someone doesn’t just say… Hey let’s close the thing before we lose any more money! I guess I don’t understand city government? It was a bad idea from the beginning. Why continue to send good money after a failed project?
Very convenient that this information was not published until l after the debate even though it was available. There was some discussion about the Colliseum on Thursday evening.
Bloomington isn’t governed – they are CONTROLLED.
At the debate Tari said “We’ll make it succeed, whatever it takes”. Meaning, no matter how much tax money it takes! We can’t afford this, or him!
Yes, let’s forfeit FUTURE tax revenue for the next 23 years in order to entice and subsidize a hotel/conference center in order to REDUCE any future red ink from the Coliseum. After all, those are not CURRENT tax dollars. This concept is not economically sound.
Lawrence451 may be quite right. It may be less expensive to just close the place and put it up for sale for what is owed on it. Only do minimum maintenance. Seeing how the city cut a deal to let someone new manage it closing it may not be possible.
Before the city changed management it should have been weighed to just close it.
Better yet, just give it away! Then our losses would be restricted to the amount of the bond repayment…
At some point in the not to distant future the city will be forced to unchain us from this boondoggle. Bloomington’s one economic driver is being disrupted as I write this. In order to compete with start ups like Lemonade, State Farm will be forced to automate jobs that are currently done by many people. AI is poised to replace the vast majority of the phone customer service jobs on the planet. How many people at State Farm do nothing but phone customer service work? A few thousand? So the tax base (sales and property) will decline to the point were the city will have to start fighting fires and making hard choices on where to spend finite declining tax money. When the firefighting begins the Coliseum will be dropped like a bad habit. No one in the city administration sees the coming issues with the disruption and continued downsizing of State Farm or they are afraid to talk about it. Either way, ignoring this reality is not going to make it go away and spending precious resources on boondoggles instead of much needed infrastructure is borderline crazy. We have city officials and most of the business community operating in a world that no longer exists. Our linear expectations for the rate and scope of change are no longer valid. 20th Century expectations of a slow measured change will be upended by the relentless technological tsunami that is impacting every aspect of our world. Pouring endless about of tax dollars into this failed plan to revitalize the downtown will not help the city prepare for the future. City administrators and officials are a actually helping to destroy our future by pretending the Coliseum is ever going to be anything but a money loser.
Franklin, North Carolina. A man from there invented the way to electronically file your Income Taxes. He is a millionaire on his way to billions. But he felt he needed to give back to his hometown and he built in combination on the same property, a large topnotch restaurant, a place for an arcade, a go cart track, and best of all a 3500 seat auditorium.
He then hired a person of entertainment knowledge in several different areas. Now only about 300 miles from Nashville, Tn, they do get several older Country Entertainers, but they also get traveling road shows and comedians. I have seen Jeff Foxworthy, among others. Vince Gill, Mel Tillis, and Charlie Pride to name a few. Each entertainer does only one performance, and it is pretty much sold out too boot. My point here is we have this Coliseum and realistically the City is ether going to give it away or make it pay.
My thought was would it be possible to entice the County’s Largest employers to jointly take over the booking of entertainment only and see if they can develop at least a once or twice a month entertainment schedule. And no it does not have to be all Country,
as Franklin has also Gospel, Stage Plays often, and lot of times it is Holidays type shows.
We just saw what a used Automobile Manufacturing Plant is worth. If we would take that same percentage of original cost to resale price, yep we would be giving the Coliseum away. Just my thought.