NJHFR

The following is a note for our city council in reference to Item 9 on the agenda for the meeting tonight 12/4/12.  

Mayor and council members,

I’ve come before this council over the last several months with concerns about JB Wells Park, and tonight because of item 9 on the agenda I’m missing my sons band concert to be here and speak against this agenda item.

I want to make it clear that I love the fact we have a grade “A” arena that people from around the state seem to love to visit.  It obviously has attracted national attention for the national jr high finals rodeo to even give us a nod to accept a bid from us.  I think our arena is a great asset to our community, and could possibly in the future provide even more benefit to our community.

But with all that said I have extreme misgivings with the proposal for us to pursue the NJHFR finals.  I wish to go over some of them right now. 

           1)      The last several times that the current budget of JB Wells has been brought before the council and questions have been asked about its’ financial status, our city manager has not been able to give us any real numbers.  We still do not really know what our current level of management is able to do for not costing tax payers money.

If I’ve seen the budgetary information posted in your packages correctly JB Wells spent 99% of their budgetary funds in about 6 months.

Our current concessions is on a probationary period because we’ve still not been able to get that under control and managed properly.

            2)      Our city manager has told us that we are already short on manpower for current events.  That the current ‘small’ rodeos are causing stretching our manpower to swap arenas and get prepared, so is it even feasible for our staff to manage something of the magnitude of the NJHFR Finals?

             3)      Let’s take a look at the requirements

a.       1200 stalls.  If I’m correct that’s approximately 6 times our current size.

b.      30,000 sq ft under air building, a 2,500 sq ft under air building,  along with 9 meetings rooms with under air accommodating between 20 and 100 people.

c.       A dance floor for 1000 people.  Last I saw Herman Sons has a capacity of 275, so something 4 times the size of Herman Sons.

d.      A minimum of 550 camping slots, preferably 800, PLUS 150 trailer drop off locations.  So read between 700 and 1000 slots.

e.      A shooting range for 500 individuals

f.        Parking for 8000 people a day.  Even at 4 people a car that’s 2000 vehicles. 

g.       400 golf carts

      h.      The sanitation facilities, bathrooms, showers, etc that will need to be built to handle this one event. We still haven’t built the bathroom promised the soccer players several years ago at Independence Park, and you want to accommodate 800 families with facilities at JB Wells Park.

And that’s just the start.  We definitely don’t have a hotel that even has 175 rooms in it, and even with the hotels on the books, you’re going to have a hard time getting 175 rooms.  That would be over 3 entire hotels at the size hotel we have in our community.  

Now looking at these requirements I want to make a correction to the Agenda Item Briefing Data that was prepared for you by the city.  On page 2 under budgetary considerations there is listed $0.  Unless the city has found Aladdins’ Lamp and still has 3 wishes on the genie, or found their fairy godmother who is willing to perform some bipity bopity bo and make all this appear then this information is grossly understated.  These things do not magically appear without huge financial and man hour investments. Additionally it has already cost us in time and money spent by the city attorney and employs per the agenda item.

But that’s just the start, once these facilities are built we now have continued financial responsibilities to maintain these facilities. 

Have we even considered the environmental impact of doubling the size of our community for a month?  Water is never in great supply, especially in June and July.  Trash, Manure, road damage, and other impacts would be significant during this time period, all at a cost to the city.

Security and health also falls under our part of the bargain.  With police already stretched thin we want to double our size and problems for a month?  Have you visited the ER and seen the issues we have there, without adding 8000 more citizens to be injured for the month.

In addition I’ve read all the financial impact information provided by the rodeo association. I want to point out a couple of discrepancies.

            1)      Gallop NM is over 3 times the size of Gonzales and has a budget of over $100 million dollars.

            2)      A quick google search shows over 100 restaurants listed in Gallup

            3)      2 full theaters running 7 days a week along with bowling alleys and 3 other amusement parks listed for entertainment. 

            4)      2 trailer sales businesses 

            5)      7 new car dealerships 

            6)      Dozens of hiking trails

            7)      Etc, etc, etc

And that’s just a start.  The $5.2 million impact that was created in Gallup is almost impossible to reproduce in our current economic state.  To call it a pipe dream to bring that kind of economic impact to our community would be nice at best.  We do not have the businesses in place to sell that much, so let’s not pretend we do.

But what upsets me as bad as anything else is that this proposal, like every other proposal concerning JB Wells expansion, is ‘popped’ up on the city council agenda with a short fuse deadline.  This project is 10x bigger than the biggest event we have in Gonzales, and you are expected to in a few minutes understand the entire scope of this project, repercussions, and true financial pitfalls that you are being asked to support.  This should have been in front of the council in July, not December, just over 2 weeks before a proposal deadline is looming before us. 

And I haven’t even gotten into the part of the JB Wells PARK that has not been completed and never will be completed if these facilities are increased to the size required to host the national finals.  When are we going to focus on our taxpaying citizens and their needs and desires?

I was at the ‘vision planning meetings’ we had a couple of months ago. I know that the NJHFR is a vision that this community has.  But if you’ll remember that vision was 20 years from now.  Time enough for us to truly plan.  Time for us to prepare.  Time for us to make sure that we have a successful NJHFR.  Who knows, maybe even time for us to expand what is now JB Wells Park in acreage so that we could accommodate not only a rodeo this size, but the parks and trails that the citizens of Gonzales could truly enjoy and use and were promised by this council.  

Please don’t put the cart before the horse tonight by approving this proposal.