David Wharton breaks blog silence to take Rhino Times editor John Hammer to task for Thursdays column entitled War Memorial to be Shell of Former Self.. David apparently composed his letter to the editor submission on his blog to give us a sneak peek at his point-by-point refutation of Hammer's accounting of the January 17th War Memorial Task Force committee meeting.
During the work of the Task Force, John has asked me to let him know when the meetings are scheduled, and I have done a pretty poor job of it. But the meeting are far from a secret. Because I had written down the wrong start time for the last meeting and passed the erroneous information to John, he and I walked in at the same time: 5:00. The meeting had started at 4:00.
Although I agree with Wharton that some of Hammer's assertions are unfounded and sensational, the one thing that John got right is the fact that the seating capacity of WMS will, in all likelihood, be significantly reduced.
We started off with a 6,000 seat stadium, but the options we will be seeing during today's 4:00 meeting will be for only three seating capacities: 1500, 2000 and 2500. The voices of the few on the committee who are trying to hold out for a higher capacity seem to be in the minority. A large part of the reason for such a severe seating reduction is because few on the committee can justify the higher cost of a complete 6,000 seat renovation. This is especially true when Sports Commission director Marc Bush keeps assuring everyone that there really is no need for more than 1000 seats at WMS. He and I disagree on that point.
I'll have more to say after today's meeting.
10:31:21 AM 
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