Director Smith touches on the subject at the city council informational meeting yesterday (FF: 25:00). Councilor Jamison suggested that they should have used a lottery system instead of first come, first serve in selling club seats. Which makes sense, this is how the city sells liquor licenses. It is not complicated, and by all accounts it is fair. And if you are chosen, and don’t have the money to pony up, you draw the next name. Seems simple? Right?
Smith does his best to make the ‘lottery system’ sound complicated. He goes into a mundane diatribe about making company names public (who are in the supposed drawing) and getting a ‘deposit’. Blah, Blah, Blah.
There is no reason the names would have to be made public in the drawing, there is also no reason they would have to make a deposit, I think a simple credit application would do. And since these club seats were so popular, as I said above, if you draw a name, and they don’t have the money, you draw another name.
Why do I think they didn’t use the lottery system? I have a feeling those club box sales kinda went down like the naming rights contract.
Pre-determined? Perhaps? We may never know, as councilor Jamison points out.
Jamison reminds Smith about ‘transparency’ and how it has kinda been lacking in this process with the city council. To which Smith replies, “We had a press conference announcing they were for sale.â€