The Amphitheatre Stays on Track

Well perhaps I am not a great blogger- I should have had a post on this topic over a week ago and my posts are still too long! In retrospect what I write today is much different than probably what I would have written after the latest vote to keep the Amphitheatre A and E design funding in our capital budget. I was glad we returned the project to our capital budget but the process sure wasn’t pretty. I continue to learn a lot about this project and my role on council- especially over the last few weeks. I do believe that council made the correct decision last week to move forward to the next phase of design, usage and operational budgets for this project. We should know fairly soon about potential uses of an all-weather amphitheatre at Elmwood park and how that impacts the design and the operating budget. This will lead to about as accurate an estimate as we can get on what subsidy the city may expect to pay for this commercial amphitheatre with significant community usage. The question is not if there is a subsidy- but what subsidy is acceptable for this state of the art facility with- in my mind- huge economic potential for our downtown, our city and our region. I have heard much over the last week and as I said at the last council meeting this is not an easy decision. Ambivalence and uncertainty are a given with a “new” quality of life project that will change a downtown park, change the entrance into our downtown and change how we are use to doing things. I believe the change will be good, will be positive and offer many new opportunities for all ages from all walks of life. It will improve our quality of life here and will attract visitors and new residents alike. But by how much? At what costs? How different? All very good questions with no certain answers. This project has been the most prepared, studied, scrutinized project possibly in the history of the city- this is good and bad. It is good that people care and want to participate. It is bad because it is much easier from a leadership perspective to be overwhelmed with uncertainty and just shelf it or stop it when its time to make the big decisions. I believe we study too many projects and rarely do any actually happen. I believe we need to scrutinize and examine our entire capital budget process and I will help take a lead on this. However, I believe if we think a project is a good one as we have over many years and over many votes on this one we should not “can it” until we are sure it won’t work. We are getting to information that will help us with this question and I believe that is the right thing to do. There are many questions to come, much more public input and ultimately more votes on council after this phase concludes. We are not building the amphitheatre this year and in this economy but we will be prepared to move forward in better times if that appears to be the right thing to do at that time. Yes that may be a year or so away and may be with a different council- but those concerns should not paralyze this council as fear to make decisions has in the past. I am glad council took the time to study, debate and re-examine the second decision and I support the third decision in this recent debate to proceed to A and E renderings. I believe council as a whole can move forward as a team and continue to scrutinize the project and make the best and most informed decisions as the next phases of this project present themselves. While we disagreed recently, I do believe we would all like to see this project happen if it is feasible. That is what we will learn with this phase of the project. There are many concerns here- have we given enough in capital funds to the schools (I would say given two new HS and the largest capital projects in our history we have), what other capital projects are deserving, should we not spend any capital in this economy, what about Salem, and many more questions studied and not studied??? So please post comments and I will do my best to be a good blogger and respond. - Dave