If Ernest Thayer Could See Us Now

I wish we had a Mighty Casey because between our City Manager and City Council, we're close to having a Mudville Nine. 

We have a baseball stadium from thirty+ years ago, Dodd Stadium, when we attracted (lured is a better word, and bribed even better) a minor league team, an affiliate of the New York Yankees, based in Albany, New York. After four years, they left and were replaced by an affiliate of the San Francisco Giants. 

Then they left, the minor leagues reorganized, and we hosted a Single-A affiliate of the Detroit Tigers. And then, stop me if you've read this before, they left because the minor leagues were radically reinvented. There was no room at the table for anyone in Norwich until the Norwich Sea Unicorns of the Futures Collegiate Baseball League (a college summer league) took up residence. 

Meanwhile, the meter on costs and expenses kept ticking, and the current operating deficit for the stadium is over three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Monday night, the City Council (unanimously) and City Manager signed a one-year extension with an 'increased lease payment', from 22K to 35K, that will do close to nothing to fill the deficit in a city where children are shortchanged at budget time, public safety needs more funding than the city can offer, and the roads and sidewalks need repair everywhere

I'd be curious to know how large the operating deficit of Dodd Stadium was when the Norwich Baseball Stadium (NBSA) was still functioning (and why, at the Council meeting on October 6th, when 'inactive boards and commissions were dissolved,' the NBSA wasn't among them) and how much additionally has been thrown into the hole created by all the lease agreements negotiated by Mayor Nystrom and City Manager Salomone.

Dodd Stadium long ago devolved from a Field of Dreams to a Field of Schemes. Nothing in a one-year lease agreement with a summer collegiate baseball team that averaged (in 2024) 1,648 attendees will do anything other than exacerbate the current fiscal situation for the city of Norwich.

The mantra being voiced by City Council members and the City Manager is that somehow, in some way, Dodd Stadium (with a tenant) can help spark the continuing economic development of Norwich. This is well beyond wishful thinking and borders on abject bullshit.

The stadium, for a variety of reasons, was built as far from downtown as possible, snuffing out the hopes to use it as a fulcrum for downtown development as Hartford has tried to do with Dunkin Donuts Field (It results in an annual loss for Hartford. In fiscal year 2023, the stadium generated about $915,000 in income while the city's debt payments for the stadium were about $4.6 million, leaving a deficit of nearly $3.7 million that year. )

"Minor league baseball team owners maintain ex ante that ballparks increase employment, tax revenues, and other private economic development in the host municipality. The presence of a team or a stadium leads to neutral or negative changes primarily due to leakages and substitution. 

"Crowding out can take the form of locals not venturing near a stadium when a game is taking place, normal business or leisure travelers avoiding a local economy when a large event is occurring, or local area residents purposefully leaving the local economy to avoid a mega-event.

"In all of these cases, normal local economic activity is reduced below its regular level, meaning any gains from an event must offset the loss for the community to simply break even. Cities compete for teams and contribute millions of dollars for facilities without any evidence as to whether minor league teams and stadiums are wise investments or not." -The Economic Impact of Stadia and Teams: The Case of Minor League Baseball

When Dodd Stadium had minor league affiliations of Major League baseball teams, the NBSA broke even (I would know, I was on it), but those days are long past, and while the City Council and City Manager can hope all they want for a change of fortune, hope is not a plan, and there is no plan.

Have a commercial realtor sell the grounds and the stadium and let the purchaser do with it what they wish. Even if all the city gets is a dollar for the sale, the flow of red ink, to the current tune of 350K, will be stanched.
-bill kenny

I've Heard this One before but with a Ferret Juggler

Sometimes the universe helps a fella out. Like with this news story. 

Thanks!
-bill kenny

Never Been to Spain

The days are getting shorter and the nights crisper here in Southern New England (how oxymoronic is that descriptive? I always expect someone to say ‘pahk yer cahr, y’all’ so I just typed it (and you read it out loud, right?)) though we’re still a long way I hope from requiring, as our friends Down Under might (in July), a three dog night.

Like Cory, Chuck and Danny, I, too, have never been to Spain nor have I been to Oklahoma. But I have followed from afar a truly original public life in public service as lived by Dr. Thomas Coburn, who doesn’t make house calls because of his day job, senior Senator from the state of Oklahoma.

As you’ve probably gleaned by reading this screed on almost any given day, I am not considered a Friend of the Republican Party, unless we’re talking the Roman Republic, and yet Senator Coburn, along with (the late) Jim Jeffords, (the once and future) Bernie Sanders and (more recently) Elizabeth Warren are my most favorite members of the United States Senate and notice, please, how two of them at one time called the Party of Lincoln home.

I have not so secret hopes that Sanders and Warren might join forces on the same ticket in pursuit of  the Office of the President of the United States in 2016-perhaps with a no-nonsense slogan like “what’s left to f*ck up?” Senator Coburn is bowing out after a very long career in Dodge City in the service of the people of his home state of Oklahoma and all the rest of us, too.

For quite some time he has been a voice in the desert crying out about what he sees as inappropriate extravagance, or waste. As he closes the chapter of his life that has photo views of the Potomac, he authors one last edition of his Wastebook (and I smile at the cover thinking of my brother Kelly, whose birthday it is today and his dislike of monkeys is beyond epic.)

How can a nation with the talent assembled at the National Science Foundation fear tomorrow when we’re engaged in life changing and affirming research such as teaching monkeys how to play video games and gamble. This, ISIL or ISIS or whatever your name really is, is why we’ll always triumph no matter how many bandannas without eye holes you wrap around your head or how tightly you wind them.

Speaking of whom, on page 45, is this eye-popper/head-shaker: “The State Department’s Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC) is responsible for crafting the official online presence of the U.S. government on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter with the mission to counter the sophisticated propaganda machines of terrorist groups around the globe. This year, a portion of the $3 million taxpayers entrusted to CSCC was used to create the Think Again Turn Away Twitter account, which currently counts more than 2,000 tweets and 7,654 followers.”

I concede that’s 7,653 followers MORE than I have. But I’m going for quality, not quantity. So what does it matter?