well, there goes another $100,000 wasted, on a ‘Commons Carpet’ of all things! and that doesn’t even include the cost of the clean-up & repair to a significant area of the common (again) – which is now a muddy swamp of very expensive astroturf (which was also destroyed) – leaving much of the common inaccessible to the public, and not ready for use until next summer.
so way to go HRM, yet another harebrained fiasco at the tax payer’s expense. yup, keep up the great work HRM officials, your ineptitude, corruption, nepotism, cronyism, and utter stupidity is truly breathtaking.
bet you’re gonna blame it on the rain again, right?!
This article appears in Sep 4-10, 2008.
See here:http://www.thecoast.ca/Blog-3828.113118-4358.113118_Concert_damage_to_the_Common.htmlAnd, for the record, the taxpayers paid a total of $300,000 for the Keith Urban show. The Stones show cost us $240,000. That’s the total of HRM and provincial contributions. (Fixing the Common is paid for out of ticket receipts, I’m told.)I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad idea for the public to subsidize some of the costs of concerts, but the devil is always in the details. As it is now, there is no official policy on which concert gets how much money, and why. It’s all done from the hip, depending on the whims of the muckamucks. That’s clearly a bad thing.
i thought the carpet alone cost the city $100,000 (not including other concert expenses), which btw, had to be destroyed/hacked to pieces just so it could be yanked out of the mud. i remember shaking my head in disbelief when i first heard about the city’s unbelievably dumb idea to ‘carpet the commons’
Is this where The Homie AGAIN gets to tell Tim, you would have had a stadium in a year that would be able to host such concerts with artificial turf and would alleviate the cost to subsidize such concerts (no city bothers with subsidizing concerts if they have a stadium since shit like clean up and grounnd care is covered in the stadium rental), if you did your fuckin homework and let the people that bring games (which brings multipurpose facilites LIKE STADIUMS) do thier thing. So now Tim, you have no stadium, you dont have as many concerts (like the stones and urban) as this city CLEARLY wants, you are paying out the ass, (with HALIFAX taxpayers money) and no help forthcoming from the feds for a stadium, or the province for that matter…… so keep up the good work tim. Keep telling people that you couldnt afford the games. Now they have annual concerts instead of a regular slew of concerts, no facilities for concerts that dont need oooodles of money to repair after the stadium.keep posting how bad the games were and how your opinion saved the city lots of money. Tim, stupid shit like this grass fiasco, will go on FOR YEARS here, so you saved money on the games, but you have no facilities and this mess to clean up each year…..i love this city
“no facilities for concerts that dont need oooodles of money to repair after the stadium.”i mean after the event.
Cleaning up the Common every year is pennies compared to the cost of maintaining a stadium.
I just hate if I want to go to a public park paid for from tax dollars for the public to enjoy it being destroyed. Not cool at all.
They should keep all the concerts on the hill. The guys that use that facililty won’t mind getting sh!t on their rubbers.Heh Heh Heh
You might wanna put a pie-plate over you ass before you sit on THAT grass, Bad Guy…
EDITOR TIM …..please stop acting like ya know what you are talking about here……once the stadium is built, do you think that taxpayers actually pay for maintenance? Here is the process tim. The facility is built, then it is turned over to a consortium that specalizes in running facilities like this. Each event has a factored cost of cleaning and repair that is tossed in the rental or is money generated from gate revenue. Show me one stadium (other than Frank Clair Stadium in Ottawa that has LONG out lived its years) that tax payers are dishing out money for PAST the original construction. There isnt any. Commonwealth Stadium is the only one and that is because it is almost 50 years old. Tim, the people of edmonton have hosted the Canada Games, the Commonwealth Games, the world university games, many international track meets, MANY concerts and festivals and will do so for many many years. Why should Halifax not be as lucky? Because people like you seem to think you can run shit. Dude, we are only putting out $300,000 a year in repairs, but guess what? We only get 1 fucken event a year. We will never host the Canada games, more than one concert, have a CFL team, host the Vanier cup, have national marching band competitions, host world class track and field events, all because you and the likes of you think we cant afford it. Judging by attendence at the urban show, and the stones, halfax is ready……PLEASE DO YOUR RESEARCH BEFORE YOU TALK…… you are messing it up for others.
dear the homie:please stop acting like you know what you’re talking about….about anything.
man, you would think hedgy that you could mature to the point of just shutting up, or proving me wrong.
First, whoever thought the stage should go in-between two baseball fields, and in the outfield of both of them was out of their mind. The Stones concert had the stage on the crusher dust diamond, with most of the major staging, equipment and the crowd on one baseball field. Besides for some damage around the walkways, you could make the argument that the Commons were cleaner and in better shape after the concert than before the event. Second, the carpet, where do we begin??? That carpet probably did more damage than good, that was 100,000 dollars spent to ruin the field. It pissed down rain, water got under it, and what do you know, every inch under it now has to be repaired. A great use of money to buy concert infrastructure. Well at least Peter Kelly doesn’t have to worry about beer caps getting driven into the ground.Third, ‘great’ planning for this concert, end of summer. If you are going to use this area (the commons) for concert have one at the end of September so you know the field got the most use out of it all summer and there’s no more need for it until next Spring.
if the city wants to continue hosting concerts on the common, then it needs build reuseable platforms that can be easily assembled & disassembled, for spectators to walk, stand, dance on.personally, i hate the idea of public land being annexed for private events like big ticket concerts… i’d rather see the common be off-limits to concert promoters, et al and kept strictly for public use, as was intended. after all, it is called the COMMON for a reason.