The biggest disappointment in last night’s city council meeting (FF: 43:00) was when the city council allowed the NCAA, the CVB and the (self-appointed) Sports Authority to write an ordinance for them. I said all along that this should have went through a CC committee, but council chair Diamond Jim poo-poo’d that saying, “He sits on the Sports Authority, so the council had a representative looking at the proposed ordinance. (sic)” Well guess what? When you don’t have actual legislators looking at legislation before it is proposed, mistakes are made, and the council should be EMBARRASSED that an individual citizen actually found errors in the proposed ordinance;
“I feel that this was rushed forward very quickly and it’s a large industry that we’re being involved in now with the event center and I think there should be more talks about it,” Opp said.
While some of his concerns seemed to fall short, there was one that turned the tide of the entire meeting.
“I also feel that we should learn from the people who have been in the NCAA ticket industry for awhile, and that’s Omaha. Their only ordinance is that you cannot scalp a ticket within a half-mile within the arena,” Opp said.
Bravo to Opp for bringing this to the council’s attention, but it should have never gotten this far. The council should have reviewed this. It goes to show that the mayor, as usual, is flat out lying when he says he works with the council on legislation. He does not, and this ram-rodding is further proof that he as mayor doesn’t give two-rips about the council’s opinion, just their rubber stamps. Don’t believe me, watch his interaction with councilor Staggers before the final vote, where Staggers has to interupt the mayor 3 times to ask to BE EXCUSED from the vote because Staggers works at USF and they would be affected by the ordinance. It was quite a ‘Jackassery’ moment, but not surprising from our mayor.
Funny, it seems lately the only way this city government can get anything accomplished is through the intervention of citizens.