Say Anything Blog

The dead tree addition of the Herald has an Alerus story that’s not on their website for some reason.  Of course they have about three active Alerus stories on their website so I’m not saying they left it off for any particular reason.

But I have to object to the entire story in the paper as being misleading.  A casual reader might get the idea that there’s a compromise in the works which is not the case.

The headline said “A Compromise on Alerus Fees” followed by the sub headline “VenuWorks likely to repay some money city says it owes.”

The story went on and detailed the proposal by Venuworks to lower their fees somewhat in the next five years to make up some of the costs.

The fact is that the finance committee directed the City Attorney to review Venuworks position, but even if Venuwork’s position is correct they still lost $250,000 of the city’s money and still owe use the $175,000 in fees that they received in 2008.

It seems that Venuworks wants to pay back the city over the five years of the contract that was sprung on us last August.  The city’s position should be is that we paid them this money last year when we shouldn’t have.  Venuworks has known about their obligation since at least February of this year.  Why would we wait five years?  We pay them on time.  Why can’t they pay us as promptly in return?

Venuworks owes us, you and me, $175,000.  A certified check today would be just fine. 

And what if we cancel the contract.  According to prior reports either party can cancel the contract with 30 days notice.  I certainly think the city should get our money back now and cancel the contract as soon as possible.  Venuworks has done a terrible job for the city.  The Alerus Commission Chairman said that part of his premise behind renewing the contract before the Britney concert was that he understood that they were close to break even on the Britney concert.  Since we never got close even with another month to go it’s clear they signed the contract under false pretenses. 

I also have to notice ANOTHER glaring descrepancy in reporting.  Today Tu Uyen Tran reported that the secret meeting where members of the Alerus Commission supposedly granted Venuworks the right to lose as much money as they could on concerts happened in March of 2008.  Funny, just last Friday Tran said there was no record of the meeting and nobody knew exactly when it was. 

Of course that’s his practice.  I already pointed out a couple times that back in February he reported that the Alerus lost $719,000 in their concert fund.  Lately he’s telling us that it was $499,000.  Orwellian to say the least.