The News article “Arena/Heat loss estimated at $3.25 million in 2011” left me confused.
Why would city staff be considered responsible for tax dollars disappearing into the AESC?
It was the city leaders of the day who voted to build a very expensive building in an area offering too little parking combined with limited ingress and egress.
Would more shows help the bottom line? Somehow, I think not. In fact it seems that operating costs increase with increased activity. And this was and remains entirely predictable.
The folk who questioned the fiscal sense of the AESC weren’t trying to rain on everyone else’s parade. Some sat down and crunched numbers, the data including estimated cost of shows matched with apparent disposable income of friends and relatives. Even comfortably middle class families were (and are) unlikely to have sufficient funds left over to support expensive entertainment on a regular basis.
Councillors back then could have done these same calculations. But it didn’t happen. It seems a tad late to expect “staff” to dig us out of this morass.
Regina Dalton
