Alerus PR Guy/Herald Reporter Challenges Alerus Critics to Solve the Problem

What I find infuriating about the whole thing is the constant whining. “It sucks because it loses money. It always loses money. Nobody cares that it loses money. And if they say it’s not sucky, they’re lying.” Etc., etc.
Words are cheap, OK?
People that want change should have a proposal and a strategy for instituting change. If you don’t like it losing money — and I think most people don’t — then what’s the alternative?

I think it’s funny that you’d try to shift the blame to the people who have been right all along about the Alerus Center. But I guess we should be happy. It was only thirteen months ago that he told us Alerus critics to “Shut up.”
I fancy myself as one of the top (if not the number 1) Alerus critics out here. Now why should he blame me? I guess he has to spread the blame around. His side has been wrong all along. They’ve lied and they’ve covered up losses. They told us that they were the experts and that our concerns about their lack of a business plan was no big deal.
But we haven’t come up with alternatives so we’re to blame too.
Actually we have come up with alternatives and he knows it. He even somewhat acknowledges that by saying that if we can’t the majority to agree with us then our ideas aren’t worth anything.
Of course that final point is stupid. The problems at the Alerus have been obvious all along. We’ve got a group (The Alerus Gang) that doesn’t give a rip about how much of our money they waste. The only problem has been getting the political will to change the status quo. That’s what I’ve been working on. If I haven’t been as successful as I’d like, it hasn’t been from a lack of trying. It’s hard and the Alerus gang hides information, schedules controversial projects until right after elections and the local rag acts as the Alerus’s PR department.
But I’ll accept his challenge. The ideas are simple. The execution is going to take someone different than the crowd that’s been mismanaging the Alerus these last 8 years:
The building is just plain mismanaged. They are way overstaffed with year round workers. I just did a post that they added a 23rd person to their management page on their website. They could save hundreds of thousands of dollars and get more work done.
When it comes to concerts they need to pay attention to what concerts work and what don’t. The other venue in town seems to be able to make money even though they have less seats to sell. They’re just not going to be able to book every washed up pop-tart that some say lip syncs her concerts.
I also have to laugh when Tran said that IF we lose big on the Britney Spears concert that it’s unlikely that we’ll have another big concert for a long time. What’s with him speculating about that. Just last week Tran reported that the Britney tickets were “close to breaking even.” He reported that they were on schedule going as well as they could. Last month Tran reported that the executive director said the sales were “very encouraging.”
Now why would Tu Uyen be hedging on what he’s reported? Does he think that the Alerus Gang is lying to him and the concert is going to lose a ton of money?
The public is getting fed up with the Alerus gang acting like we’re lucky to have them mismanaging one of the city’s most valuable assets. They’ve been acting like they were experts and we critics have been fools to question. Funny, that we critics have been proven right time and time.