Following the release of information from the Ohio Cultural Facilities Commission today on the show Tom Chema of Gateway Consulting the people responsible for the the Gerkin Arena called to "educate" me. According to the report the only confirmed sources of income as of June this year was $9,700,000 of the total $115,000,000 needed.
The report also very clearly stated " it is not inconceivable that the project will be halted, representing a cost without a benefit for the County, or otherwise represent a future financial obligation potentially as great as the total annual operating cost and total debt service on the Facility." Their words, not mine.
Join me at 7:30a for your Freducation.
Tom Chema On 1370 WSPD Wednesday At 7:30a
By fred - Posted on August 19th, 2008
Tagged:
The people responsible for the arena would be the Commissioners and other elected officials, who rely on the information provided by Gateway Consulting.
When one searches for Gateway Consulting on google, the number of communities that have used the services of the consultants are quite numerous.
Actually Mr. Chema relies on information supplied to him by our elected officials and then consults us. Like many other consultants his response and knowledge is only as good as the information he gets from the commissioners. You should probably listen to the interview so you will have a better grasp of what it is that Mr. Chema does for his paycheck.
I'm sure many communities have used Gateway, but I don't know what that has to do with our situation. Unless you're trying to say because others use them they must be good.
You might want to look at the situation with the arenas/fields in Cleveland where the dollars from the sin tax aren't nearly as plentiful as they thought they would be and Cuyahoga County now helps cover the cost of the projects.
Very often in your posts you allude to things which you never end up specifying, is that because you just don't have the facts or are you just afraid to take one side or the other on items and back it up?
Mr. LeFebvre, having been around the block a couple of times in my life, I know opinion from facts.
Your show is mainly opinion based, at least to me.
Chema and his group are consultants.
Consultants, at least the ones I worked for, are motivated by profit and the client has an expectation that the consultant will help them in their business plan, etc., and by paying the consultants the business or in this case the county and city want a plan to come to fruition, to help pull up the city and the county and help us all to prosper. The consultants base a plan on expectations. The posts from the many projects he and his consultancy worked on, pointed out that there was walk around and walk through's and not plans drafted by simply listening to a commissioner or others.
Having googled for Chema and his group before posting, I did read a lot of pro's and con's about Chema and his consultancy, at a lot of venues across the country. Cleveland like Toledo and others in our area, did not seem to read or see the hand writing on the wall, with regards to the changing business world and shift in manufacturing. So, do we blame the consultants that are not being called on, or the organized workers who as you claim have held us back, or do we put the blame on 40 plus years of being content and not looking forward by all the elected people up to now and those in office.
It is not just about Cleveland. His groups consults all over the country.
The simple fact is, that this area needs something to boost it up and get revitalized.
Many want private business to do that.
Funny thing is, the private businesses head to other county's and city's.
Some do not want tax payer monies spent on projects to help the tax payers, because there is some risk involved.
Like I have asked before on other posts, do we really know what we want? We want more for the city, but we do not want government spending our tax dollars on it, or it has to be a sure thing. We all know there is no sure thing in life, except to be able to buy yesterdays winners from the horse races, today.
I know, there is nothing written some where that says that people cannot do this or that, and spending stolen money, taxes, is bad.
But without some action by some one, we continue to wax and wane and wait for the days that never seem to come.
I was surprised at some of Tom's responses. I never like to hear someone say "trust me".
http://www.wspd.com/pages/fredstop10.html