Mayor Huether weighs in on the Garth shows

Mike was on his favorite softball throwing show, B-N-B this morning. Besides weighing in on Garth (we will get to that shortly) he got some other things out of his craw.

Besides saying he will cut subsidies to non-profits (still waiting for him to return the $500K from a tennis center he named after himself) he talked about the districting of the Parks Board.

He said that the current board is not broken. I think most would agree, that is why Stehly’s proposed legislation wouldn’t eliminate any of the current members, this is about moving forward in a growing diverse community.

He said while he understood we need laws and regulations he sometimes feels like there are ‘too many’ and he thinks this change is an unneeded regulation. So I guess when it comes to smoking outdoors, long grass, trimming the city trees, etc. those are worthwhile regulations? Why? Because they keep the minions inline, but when we want to regulate the ruling class, there seems to be too many rules. Admit it Mike, you love the status quo when it protects you and your ruling class, but when it comes to the peasants, RULES, RULES, RULES! Heck, your biggest fan, Joe Kirby was on the Good Ship Lalley Pop show yesterday bragging about how well the home rule charter (he helped create) is working and said Mike was doing a fabulous job as our city’s King.

Mike also weighed in on Garth Brooks.

Some say that I need to get over the EC being passed and deal with it. Oh, I have, but I also feel we can DO BETTER when it comes to the way the building is run, and it would take very minor adjustments to make the building more profitable and make access to affordable tickets to Sioux Falls citizens and others in the region.

Ironically, the mayor points out some of these simple solutions in his interview this morning.

He said he was ‘impressed’ with how Brooks handles his ticket sales, especially with the controls he has in place to make sure his fans get tickets without being gouged.

I would agree, so why doesn’t the mayor’s office and the city council pass ordinances to put those controls in place for all ticket sales? Many other municipalities across the country have done just that. It’s not like the Mayor and Council are not aware of the problems. Citizens have been begging since the place opened to put some regulations in place to make tickets more available locally without being subjected to ticket brokers outrageous prices. Sit down with Ticketmaster and the Brooks camp and ask them how they do it, and duplicate some of those procedures in Sioux Falls. Want to add something positive to your legacy before leaving office? Here is your opportunity.

Huether also made the claim that probably over half of the people who attend events at the EC are from out of town. The problem with this claim is that there is no statistical way to prove this claim. As I mentioned above, with the interference of ticket brokers, we have NO idea who is purchasing tickets locally. A ticket broker in Kansas City, for example could buy 20 tickets and turn around and sell those tickets to people all over the region including in Sioux Falls. If we put more controls on purchases we would know who is purchasing the tickets and if they are attending. We could also be promoting our own shows which not only would give us more control of ticket sales it would give the taxpayers a bigger cut of the profits. It’s not some new concept in Sioux Falls. The Pavilion promotes a ton of it’s own events and controls their ticket sales. Rumor has it, that the city gave a short term loan last year to the Pavilion to promote a kid’s musical that did five shows. It’s doable, we would just do it on a larger scale at the EC.

He also talked about the economic impact of Garth’s seven shows (and counting) which I don’t deny, but you also have to take into account that the EC will be closed for 3 months over the summer (A quarter of the year). How many sold out shows could we have had over that 3 month period? Seven? Ten? We will never know. IMO, we will just be playing catch-up with the Garth shows for the 3 months we were closed. The lights and full time staff still have to be paid whether the facility is being used or not, those operational costs have to be absorbed somewhere.

I hope the mayor listens to the replay of his interview today and really thinks about some of the POSITIVE changes we could make to the EC to make it truly a great and profitable facility (for the city NOT just SMG).