rantanamo wrote:tamtagon wrote:I thought I saw something in the DMN about the State Fair of Texas folks getting in hot water for covering up how they were spending money ... about the court diversions, excessive salaries.... there was also something else about SFoT failing to meet contractual obligations to Fair Park maintenance.
say what?
This article starts out about what will happen with excess revenue from the 2016 state fair, then gingerly dances around more than a decade of SFoT negligent management; a light review of recent meetings and open bids to turnover management of Fair Park from the city to an outside entity.
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/fair-par ... -fair-parkState Fair of Texas, amid scrutiny, to give Dallas $6 million for improvements at Fair Park
Written by Tristan Hallman, Dallas City Hall Reporter
The State Fair of Texas wants Dallas to know it's making good on its promises to turn excess revenue back over to the city.... a minimum of $6 million to fix up Fair Park.
The funds, which the State Fair is contractually obligated to use on such improvements, are an increase over last year's total ... The State Fair has long been Fair Park's primary tenant and has a contract with the city through at least 2028 ... State Fair President Mitchell Glieber, who became president in 2014, doesn't criticize his predecessors in State Fair leadership. But he does often say the State Fair has things it "can do better." to make the park a year-round attraction....
And State Fair officials worked with former Hunt Oil CEO Walt Humann's bid to start a nonprofit that would manage the park year-round ... But after months of work on a plan, the city reversed course and opened a bidding process ... [many] believed Humann's group was little more than a Trojan horse for the State Fair to take control of Fair Park....
...State Fair's buildings, which are mostly designed as exhibition spaces that accommodate the fair's festivities ... deferred maintenance piling up for years, and the city hasn't put much money in to fix them up. But that is where the State Fair was supposed to come in. For years, the State Fair put much of its excess revenue into Fair Park projects that helped the fair and not necessarily the park....
But about $6 million extra, which was intended as a management fee for Humann's group, will now help fill some of that gap ... State Fair spokeswoman Karissa Condoianis wants the city and its residents to see the fair as a partner, not an adversary. "We can't change the past," she said. "The fair is under new leadership. The strides Mitchell has taken are incredible. ... It's a different future with him."
It's kinda like that long painful process of losing the Locomotive Museum. The museum had not been paying rent or utility bills for years, and the city forgot to keep track of any of that sort of details around it... tried to sue the museum people, someone got fired, the museum moved to Frisco without having to pay Dallas Fair Park anything adding to the unused space.
A complete mess and a new millennial crony-capitalists fight over money that slowly ruins it for everyone.
One "improvement" the SFoT got over the years was money toward a new greenhouse. This saved money over time, by sheltering the exotic potted plants put out during the Fair and provided a place to grow most of the annuals used only during the Fair. SFoT had to get approval for the greenhouse to
not be in the art deco style of the park and for the greenhouse to
not be open to the public.... so, instead of adding to the existing greenhouses at Fair Park enhancing the experience through architecture and public visitation, the greenhouse was tucked out-of-sight, limited as a single purpose facility. Terrible decision.
Take a different view, what greenhouses and gardens are at Fair Park are popular, and during most of the year the opportunity to display potted flowers and such just comes and goes without any attempt to help make the place interesting or pretty. Instead, this greenhouse should have been built in the grand art deco style of Fair Park making the architecture a center stage of a working greenhouse designed around public visitation. whatever -- the stupidity of such self serving decision making still makes me mad!