What the heck do I know about running a theatre?

I don't usually respond to anonymous challenges, but this commenter makes a fair point in response to Friday's post about the Elks debacle. I'm putting up a new post because Friday will soon scroll off the front page.

The commenter says:

You state previously, the editor gives no reason except they said so, yet you do the same thing on this piece. What is your expertise here?

You're right, I basically assumed that everyone knows how long I've been working this row.

I've been a technical theatre professional since 1972. I joined IATSE while still in high school, and after college I worked as stage manager to the Grand Rapids (MI) Children's Civic Theatre for three years as my first regular gig. Over the decades I've handled every job in theatre but makeup, from loading trucks to business and artistic management, to method training for actors, to the pit.

My last major gig was designing, building and managing the first two seasons of Arizona Classical Theatre, which involved building the largest temporary structures ever to appear on the Square and Granite Creek Park. Unlike most theatre operations, when I was managing everyone got paid. Not much, but everyone.

I've performed in and produced or helped produce many shows at the Elks, including the musicians' benefit for Katrina victims.

I got involved with the Elks issue when I was a board director on the Prescott Area Arts & Humanities Council, and we were invited into the discussion when Prescott College abandoned its lease and the Arizona Foundation was looking to unload the theatre. Along with other theatre and arts professionals, I looked into the integrity of the building and its economic viability, resulting in a PAAHC recommendation that the City reacquire the Elks and turn its operation over to a nonprofit to run.

The City Council under Mayor Sam Steiger took our ideas and tossed out the parts that would make it work. There's a long story there and since, but I'll skip that rant for now.

A few years ago I wrote an overview to help clarify the situation at the Elks for Read It Here, part of which is still online here.

I still work occasionals as a stagehand at Yavapai College Performance Hall, just to keep my hand in. It's not something you give up before you're dead.

I hope this answers the question.

Another Wednesday

What are you puttering around with today?

Editorial: Hurtling health care train needs to slow up

Some of the commenters have already pointed out that the unnamed Courier editor's "hurtling" train has been an awfully long time coming. But the editor knows that, of course. He's just transcribing the Fox News chyrons, which furnish everything a good Republican foot-soldier needs to know about anything.

Why are we in a hurry, editor? Because out here in the reality-based community we're impoverished, bankrupt, chronically ill and dying for the lack of a civilized health-care system.

Clear models have been in place and working since the 1940s. We know what to do and how to do it. What's holding up the train has always been the entrenched insurance industry and its corporatist soldiers, like the editor, who don't mind how much it costs our society as long as they get theirs.

Why does it have to be 1,000 pages, editor? I'd like to count up how many of those pages are in there to try to mollify you and your industry overlords with exemptions, loopholes and sweetheart deals demanded by the corporations, just because Democrats are determined to be inclusive, even though they know that in the end the Rs will vote against them anyway. The result is looking to be another hopelessly watered-down, ineffective waste of time, I fear.

So, editor, you're getting your wish. Your guys have derailed the train again. Be happy.

Letter: Barking dogs drive newcomers to brink

It's not really surprising that Wayne Holmes feels so besieged by barking dogs. I experienced something similar myself when I moved into my current neighborhood. It takes some work to find the relevant chunk of City code, and some hassle to prepare a complaint that the PD will attend to. Here's the code:

5-2-5: MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS:
(A)
1. All dogs, hybrid dogs and hybrid cats shall be kept and maintained in such a manner so as not to disturb the peace, comfort or health of any person residing within the boundaries of the city. (Ord. 3026, eff. 12-24-92)
2. It shall be unlawful for any person to keep or maintain a dog or hybrid dog which is in the habit of barking, howling or otherwise disturbing the peace and quiet of any person within the boundaries of the city. For purposes of this section, a dog or hybrid dog shall be deemed to be in the habit of barking if it is proven that the animal barks, without justification, for five (5) or more continuous minutes on two (2) separate occasions within a thirty-six (36) hour period. (Ord. No. 3026, eff. 12-24-92)

The key point: you have to prove your complaint, unless you can get an officer to hang out for a few minutes and hear for hermself. It's a PIA, but you're not powerless.

I have to say that writing an LTE on something like this is a waste of energy, though. Wayne doesn't mention that he's even talked with his neighbors about it. Is he acting like a neighbor, or a victim?

Editorial: Closing P.O. isn't end of universe

The unnamed Courier editor poo-poohs the reader letters and comments about the proposed loss of service at the Goodwin Street post office on the square. We can reasonably infer that the editor doesn't go there, so he doesn't care. Typically, in his myopia he's glossing over several important considerations.

The square is the beating heart of our vibrant downtown area. Living here for a long time, it's easy to forget how unusual it is to have a historic city center that is healthy and thriving, and how fragile it is if neglected. Our downtown works because it offers a healthy range of business and government functions in a walkable space.

I expect that most residents don't realize that the Goodwin St building is more than a post office. Along with City Hall and the county courthouse, it's the third leg in the government tripod, the historic federal building, including the district court and other functions upstairs. It's also an impressive historic structure, its warm, woody interior embellished with WPA art and the subtle smell of brass.

In the context of other government functions, it just makes sense to look for the post office on the square, and the postal function is the building's biggest draw. It's a place where we can count on meeting friends and acquaintances in passing. Last I heard there was still a substantial waiting list for those quaint PO boxes with the 86301 zip code. Closing the office will reduce foot traffic on the square and for downtown in general. (And let's not forget that people work there who eat lunch.)

Then there's the question of what happens with the building if there's no post office in it. There's little danger that it'll be torn down, I'm sure, but an empty space there is unacceptable, and converting it for other use would destroy much of the building's historic character, also unacceptable.

No, editor, the sky won't fall. But losing the old post office would be bad for downtown business, bad for Prescott's historic district, and bad for the community as a whole. The Courier long since abandoned downtown physically, and it's clear the editors are willing to abandon it generally.

Update, 6:30pm: BearWhizBeer asks whether anyone actually asserted that losing the PO meant the end of the universe. I've gone through the comments on the original story, and found no one predicting either the end of the world, as the editor says, or the end of the universe, as the breathless headline writer gave us.

Column: It's time to stop runaway spending

Here's a second case of turning a longish LTE into a "Column," indicating a new category on the op-ed page. In it retired finance exec Paul Border as Jacob Marley rattles the chains of the old order to scare readers about the progressive agenda of the Obama administration, pushing the 'socialism' button repeatedly and prophecying doom and catastrophe if we actually start taxing him and his rich pals a little more.

It's a load of ectoplasmic hooey, of course, and you've heard it all before. But considering the health-care "compromise" (read: capitulation) that's making headway in the committee of Max Baucus (D - Health Insurance Industry) today, I'm not feeling hopeful that Americans will drop this smelly fear-mongering and stupidity into the toilet, where it belongs.

Pregnancy center moves, educates clients

Jerry Herrmann turns in a pleasant little story about nice people doing nice things for young parents, and manages to keep out any trace of the organization's religionist, anti-choice mission. Follow the links on its cagey website for proof.

I don't mind coverage of outreach by religious organizations per se, they're part of the community. But actively disguising a religious group's agenda is wrong, as this one does with young women seeking help, and it's doubly wrong for the Courier to abet the deception.

Editorial: Added bureaucracy counters plan's aim

The unnamed Courier editor may be right that the county is going in the wrong direction with its plan review, but from this there's no way for the reader to evaluate that opinion, because the editor simply asserts that the direction is wrong because it would add new committees. He does not tell us what the functions of the committees would be, who would be on them, or how they would go about their business. He would have us infer that the people working this issue and recommending this change are doing it for no good reason.

Newspapers are about communication: informing the voters about what's happening, to facilitate better decisions on public policy. That's why the press is in the Constitution. But rather than tell us the what, why and how of this and showing his reasoning, the editor simply states his conclusion based on a single arbitrary factor that he doesn't like.

Perhaps the editor has a reasoning process that led to this. But his editorial reads as if he would prefer to avoid that process and whip up his readers to oppose this idea in as much ignorance as possible. This is a base and basic propaganda technique that deserves nothing but rotten tomatoes.

The alternative is that the editor is truly expressing his entire thought process on this: he sees new committees, so the proposal must be bad. If this is really the case, I have to pity the poor fool.

Okay, so let's take a look and try to parse what the editor is talking about. It seems to derive from a June 7 story by Bruce Colbert about a Development Services proposal to the Planning and Zoning Commission. The July 22 (current) draft (PDF) is here.

I notice that the editor uses the Williamson Valley Community Organization to back up his objection. But it's clear in the preamble of an earlier draft of the proposal that the WV group's primary objection (keeping corridor plans exempt from community plans) is completely different from the editor's (more committees). Moreover that wall protecting corridor plans apparently came down before the current draft.

Here's the part the editor doesn't like:

4. Committee Structure
a. The community planning process shall be organized by a two tiered committee structure as follows:

(i) Plan Advisory Committee (PAC): The PAC is a permanent standing advisory committee appointed by the Board of Supervisors and acts as an overall steering committee for all community plans and a liaison between the County and the community. The PAC shall consist of two (2) DSD Development Services staff members and a representative from each Supervisor’s District, for a total committee membership of five (5). The PAC shall review recommendations from the Community Advisory Committee and provide recommendation on all draft plans or amendments submitted to the County. The PAC shall confirm the membership and organization of the Community Advisory Committee (CAC) for individual community plan processes. Committee members shall serve at the pleasure of the Board for terms of four (4) years and may be reappointed by the Board upon term expiration.

(ii). Community Advisory Committee (CAC): The committee members are suggested by the community and confirmed by the Plan Advisory Committee. DSD County staff shall be included in the CAC committee membership. Committee appointments shall be made with the goal of providing a representative cross section of interests within the community area. The CAC is responsible for conducting the community participation/input, developing the draft plan or amendment and providing recommendations to the PAC.

As I read this, one committee forms from the community temporarily to negotiate and write the plan. That seems pretty basic -- you don't want County P&Z writing your plan for you. The other committee is permanent and designed to oversee these CACs.

If we only have one CAC working at a time, I expect that the PAC would be unnecessary. P&Z could handle the oversight directly. But Yavapai is a large and growing county, and once things get rolling I can imagine three or four of these four-year processes going on at once, maybe more. That's a lot of added oversight work to a busy schedule, and I can see the argument for adding this layer. I'm not saying this is the best way to handle it -- I don't know enough about what goes on inside and the personnel proposal for the PAC could easily favor entrenched interests -- but I can see the argument.

It would rate a cookie if the editor had bothered to cover the issue with even this light a look. But he didn't. Readers have a right to demand more.

Another reason to avoid anonymous comments

I happened to see a little story on Think Progress this weekend that seems apropos of my continuing windmill-joust at anonymous commenting. The US Attorney for the western district of New York is investigating some comments, posted under fake email addresses to the website of the Wayne County Star, about a story involving an immigration raid on a local farm. Example:

“watcha doing to mi wifey, no checky her papeles. she no legal, but she havey benifit card. oh wait, take her and I get me a applehog till I go to Mexico. Viva la Raza!!!”

Someone looked at some source code, and it appears that this and several others, covering a weird racist exchange among commenters, originated in computers at the Department of Homeland Security.

This isn't a difficult hack, and it ought to make readers wonder whether some of the comments we see on the Courier site are similarly cloaked to avoid legal or political repercussions.

Fourier analysis for guitar players, courtesy the University of Nottingham, your instant brain expansion for the week.

Editorial: Common sense takes another hike

Once again the unnamed Courier editor trots out his expertise in traffic engineering, proving by mere assertion that he knows more about it than anyone actually involved and being paid to do it.

What's really interesting is the editor's emotional response to even having a proposal about bike lanes heard by Council. I doubt that anyone among the cycling advocates is even marginally hopeful that Council will approve this idea. But the editor is sputtering in anger that Council would even entertain it.

I wonder whether the editor ever noticed that we have bike lanes in regular use along MonteWhipple, a major artery carrying more traffic than east Gurley at higher speed through more complex terrain. We have lanes in use along Rosser, a much more complex and narrower roadway with entertaining obstacles and random parking. And we have a whole lot of streets narrow and wide all over town that serve bikes and cars at the same time with no separated lanes. Yet the Courier has apparently failed to cover all the blood in the streets that the editor so vehemently purports to fear.

Maybe the rest of us are just better drivers than the editor is.


Here's sometihing the editor hasn't read on bike-lane engineering.

Elks renovation contract up for approval

Surprise, surprise: hardly begun, the Elks project is overrunning its budget, and the City is tossing the object of the restoration over the side hoping to save the high-priced contract it failed to negotiate properly.

This is what comes of having people who know nothing about theatre operate one.

The City is trying to do a major renovation of an old but structurally sound specialized building with no money, no significant expertise, and no responsibility for the outcome. Every move it has made in the Elks has been wrong-footed and impeded the next. The socialites who are raising funds for it are good-hearted, but clueless about the actual cost of what they're proposing or how to make it work.

Mark me, this project will ultimately cost over five million clams, and at the end of it we'll have a pretty but essentially function-free white elephant. That will put the Elks in permanent danger of abandonment and demise.

Turning this around before it becomes completely hopeless will involve bringing in our community's theatre professionals and refocusing the project on creating a space that will serve real acts in a real economic context, not the cloud-cuckoo land that the foundationers imagine.

Finally, just to maintain my reputation for shouting at traffic: it is not, never has been and never could be an opera house. Gad, I wish people would stop calling it that, it's nothing but hick chic.

Reporter rates WYGC one of the top places to recover

This little celebrity piece points to something that I've always found interesting about Prescott: the healing and rehabilitation industry is huge here. From the Veterans' Hospital to the many alternative healers in private practice, we have healing going on everywhere. The rehab sector by itself is very big relative to the size of the town, attracting people statewide as well as out-of-staters, celebs included.

If this is something that Prescott is especially good at, I think we ought to do more to encourage it as an economic engine, which in turn will help mitigate the impact of the inevitable small percentage of failures on our streets, under our bridges and in our flophouses.

The rehab industry gets a bad rap for the people who fall through the cracks, but I think I'd rather have those impacts than the effects of more big-box retail, for example.

Thursday featured comment

Re the non-coverage of the 'tea party' protest last Friday, Midge in Prescott:

"I have great respect for the Tea Party people at their grassroots level. Unfortunately, the Astroturf elements took over and used your legitimate protests for their own ends. You know who I mean -- the biased TV and radio personalities looking for ratings, the white supremacists who used your venues to try to increase their memberships, the birthers and other conspiracy theorists who garnered notice at your expense, etcetera ad nauseum. Your legimate complaints have been overshadowed and tainted by being associated with those others. The political blowback has been fierce. Hence, your own legimate movement has lost its good name and newsworthiness. It's a dam' dirty shame. Carry on your cause without the wingnut circus, and you will eventually be heard."

The radical rightists have yet to realize that their antics are driving people away from the whole side. They won't listen -- thankfully, for both their entertainment value and their political effect, i.e. pulling the respectable clothes off rightwing ideas and showing them for what they are underneath -- but you tell 'em, Midge!

Editorial: Let's stress light, not heat in races

Overall I can go along with the sentiments that the unnamed Courier editor expresses here. But there are a couple of subversive elements to the piece that I have to point out.

The first is his setting up the online comments as useful in indicating something about public opinion more generally, and giving himself a pat on the back for putting the facility into the site. I needn't say much about the logical disconnect there.

More subtle is his assertion that "The mike was theirs. They all said everything they wanted to say about themselves to make their case," and by implication the Courier is acting as a transparent conduit from the candidate to the voter. This is false. The editor or his writer has been injecting information into the candidate stories from outside the interview context, things the candidate is not saying, without identifying the difference. That skews the articles, in at least one case in favor of public controversy showing the candidate in a negative light.

I would have chosen a more investigative, fact-based "who-is-this-person" approach, but the Courier editor volunteered to do what amounts to electioneering for the candidates. To then go in and slyly undercut the ones the editor doesn't like is dirty pool.

Racetracks campaign for slots as budget solution

Rep Tobin wants permanent casino gambling at racetracks, including our own fairgrounds, to address the dearth of state revenues, and sets this up as the alternative to temporarily raising the sales tax. The industry estimates that this might bring in close to half a billion clams to state coffers in 2012. That of course does nothing about the problem we have right now, and Joanna's story leaves out the actual budget gap of over two billion and rising.

Expanded gambling looks like free money to Mr Tobin, and to a large extent I suppose it is, since local rather than state authorities will be left to pick up the tab for the resulting societal problems. But more to the point, it would allow the Legislature to look like it's doing something about revenues without taking on the structural problems that got us here in the first place. Neither gambling nor a temporary sales tax will fix the deficit, that's a false dichotomy. The gorilla in the room is residential property taxes, among the lowest in the nation, designed to promote unsustainable growth in housing.

Like any other homeowner I'm not wild about paying more in property taxes. But I'm also unhappy about what's happening to the state and my community as a result of our collective unwillingness to provide the funds necessary to maintain quality of life. More gambling and its social impacts reduce quality of life for all of us, and sends truckloads of cash out of state to shady interests. We should make a better choice.

Wednesday open

Now it can be told.

Editorial: Honeymoon ends for Obama

The unnamed Courier editor writes, "it's heartening to see that he is no better or no worse than any of his predecessors." Read that again.

One might argue that the editor just isn't very good at communicating what he means, but on reflection I think this reveals an inadvertent truth: the editor does not want an extraordinary or effective president, and by extension does not want effective government. This reflects the fashion for radical libertarianism that weighs down this country so heavily.

This further reduces doubt that the editor will consider it victory if our president fails to win effective health-care reform, fails to get us out of Iraq, fails to bring bin Laden to justice, fails to repair our economy, or fails to rebuild our education system for the 21st century. Our editor is clearly more interested in cheerleading for a political team than contributing to addressing our very real societal problems.

For shame.

Police deploy Peacekeeper

The Prescott PD gets to roll out the new toy it unveiled last week -- to bust a nonviolent non-offender with an entertaining penchant for self-decoration (and, perhaps, because of it). This is clearly a case of having a new hammer and looking for nails. How much did this pointless exercise cost? What would it have cost last week? Who ordered this deployment of both equipment and expensive personnel? Has it become PD policy to roll a SWAT team for every apparent break-in?

This incident amounts to outrageous buffoonery that diminishes the credibility of the Prescott PD as well as us as a society. Will the Courier follow up with appropriate questions? I won't hold my breath.

Editorial: Good journalism died with Cronkite

The unnamed Courier editor leaps onto Walter Cronkite's descending coffin decrying the state of journalism today and setting himself up as the last bastion of goodness and light. I'm sorry, Editor, but Cronkite would take one look at your work and send you to the mail room.

The key to maintaining your ethics is constant self-examination. Ask yourself the tough questions, seriously, challenge yourself to be toughest on your own biases, and drive the snakes out of your own nest.

Short of that, and given the Courier's history of political favoritism, the headline reads rather like triumphalism.