The Black Rod

My, my....has it only been two months since The Black Rod broke the story of millions of dollars in cost overruns on the new Blue Bombers stadium? The Winnipeg MSM ignored the story as long as they could, but by early September, when even the Hamilton Spectator was reporting the  cost of the stadium was approaching a quarter of a billion dollars, they were forced to do some reporting of their own. http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2013/09/winnipeg-blue-bombers-are-staring-at-40.html These days you can barely pick up a newspaper without seeing another story on the stadium as the Bombers admit the facility has repeatedly breached the "guaranteed" maximum price of $190 million. The difference is that our primary source, who we're calling A Person In A Position To Know, says the cost overrun is in the vicinity of $40 million, and the Blue Bombers only 'fess up to $14 million.  But given our man's accuracy so far, including the detail way ...

Open wide, folks. Mary Poppins sang how a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down--- and the first win by the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in their spanking new football stadium is as sweet as it gets. But now it's time for your medicine. While watching the game we thought that it was a good time to catch up with A Person In A Position To Know. We introduced him to you back in July with his hot tip about the cost overruns on the stadium that were being kept under wraps. http://blackrod.blogspot.com/2013/07/hidden-winnipeg-blue-bombers-stadium.html Yikes. No sooner did we touch base with APIAPTK than we realized that the team's new acting CEO Wade Miller is sitting on the biggest powder keg in blue-and-gold history.  When she blows, the blast will be monumental. And this time, A Person In A Position To Know is not the only source of the explosive news. During a recent on-line chitchat about stadium matters, when a curious football fan asked ...

Do you smell another city audit coming? This bombshell has been ticking away on the Internet for more than a week. Jul 4, 2013, 3:56 AM wait until the final cost overruns become public....yowza....upwards of 20%....still dealing with screw ups like having to go back and insulate a two season mechanical system. We're not going to identify the source other than to say its A Person In A Position To Know. The official price of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers stadium is $190 million. Add a 20 percent cost overrun ($38 million) and you have a stadium that's costing almost DOUBLE what was originally proposed to city taxpayers . But, but, but...wasn't the stadium built at a fixed price, with all overruns the responsibility of the contractor?  Phil Sheegl, chairman of BBB Stadium Inc. (Blue Bombers-Bisons), the entity that built the stadium, says so. http://forums.bluebombers.com/index.php?topic=32791.0 But The Person In A Position To Know says not.  .....

Did you read that? The revelations by Garth Buchko, CEO of the Winnipeg Blue Gougers, in Thursday's Winnipeg Free Press were stunning, even as they sailed over the heads of news reporters and sports pundits alike. Equally stunning was the extent to which the newspaper went to avoid naming the people responsible for the food-and-beverage fiasco that's come to define the predatory attitude of the Winnipeg football club towards its fans. But let's start with the bombs dropped by Buchko: * the team is crippled by debt, and a hairsbreadth from bankruptcy * the board of directors has executed a silent coup , seizing total control of the football club and turning it into a quasi-private operation  * the harsh no-food, no-drink policy that treats all fans like chiselers was forced on the club by the need to pay off the onerous debt imposed the team by the provincial government as its alleged share of the cost of the new stadium Whew. ...

It took a City Hall insider to spot Phase Two of the Selinger & Katz Stadium Scam. Remember when they said Winnipeg was going to reap millions from the sale of the land where the old stadium sits? Well, forget it. Brian Kelcey, former budget advisor to Mayor Sam Katz, was disgusted to the core at Katz's contemptuous disregard for the public in ramming a deal for a new stadium through city council. And that was before he noticed the newest twist in the con job. http://www.stateofthecity.ca/front-page/2010/12/17/its-not-over-until-the-fat-stadium-sings.html "... in what amounts to an invitation for delay, lowball pricing or worse, the City has chosen to use an Expression of Interest process (EOI) instead of a straight auction for the land or portions thereof," wrote Kelcey. "... note that using an Expression of Interest allows City Hall to use maximum flexibility in who it chooses to sell the land to, because the "express your interest...

Unelected Premier Greg Selinger and promise-breaking Mayor Sam Katz have gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent legitimate scrutiny of their backroom deal for a new stadium. Their efforts go far beyond the sleazy actions of sleazy politicians, and raise intimations of criminal acts by criminal politicians. Selinger and Katz have known for more than two months that a new stadium will cost at least $190 million. They had to have known. We knew. We wrote about it in a story cleverly headlined: Saturday, October 09, 2010 The tenders are in. Is the bill for new stadium $190 million? Does a blog know more than the Premier and the Mayor? Selinger and Katz knew in October at the latest that the stadium would cost way more than the $115 million they told the public it would. But for the next two months they pretended to be surprised as the cost estimates climbed, and climbed, and climbed. Katz went through an entire election campaign feigning ignorance about the tru...

Hallelujah! Just in time for Christmas --- a new batch of snake oil arrives in town. Unelected Premier Greg Selinger, the slimiest politician in the province, waited until the Legislature rose for the winter before leaking details of the latest, oiliest, New Stadium Deal yet. He doesn't think anyone will find it suspicious that he kept the deal hidden until the very day he can't be questioned about it on camera. Or that he won't give city councillors a look at it until, maybe, the day before their last meeting of the year, next week, when Selinger wants them to rubber stamp it with the help of his, ahem, "partner", just-reelected Mayor Sam Katz. Nope, nothing suspicious about that. Why, only a hardened cynic would compare that tactic to David Asper's hiding the cost of the new stadium until the civic election was over and his candidate for mayor, NDP-backed Judy Wasylycia-Leis, got trounced. "Still working on it", he'd say...

Sproing!!!! No matter how tightly they try to keep the secrets, details keep spilling out. The "partners", including unelected Premier Greg Selinger and promise-breaking Mayor Sam Katz, refuse to tell the public anything about the discussions going on in secret regarding the debacle of the failed plan to build a new stadium for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers football team. You know, the project they started last May based on phony construction numbers provided by David Asper, chairman of the company given an untendered contract to build the stadium. Nevertheless, tiny but revealing breaches in the wall of silence have appeared this week. Together, they provide hints at what's going on in those secret meetings. 1. The Elms is dead. David Asper's fantasy---a high-end shopping mall on the site of the existing football stadium---is kaput. www.theelms.ca " UNDER WINNIPEG'S CANOPY OF ELMS, you'll discover an upscale shopping destination t...

Somebody must have been spiking the coffee at the Winnipeg Free Press with truth serum this week. How else to explain the confessions that spilled out from reporters covering important beats, declarations that explain why the newspaper has become a worthless read. Legislature reporter Bruce Owen wrote Friday that Question Period, the meat and potatoes of his beat, bores him to tears. (Its) "a great time for me to catch up on email. That’s because, sitting up in the media perch, there’s not that much else to do." he said. "Other reporters check up on the Facebook profiles and one religiously plays BrickBreaker on his Blackberry. He’s gotten pretty good at it." Two days earlier, Owen's colleague, education reporter Nick Martin, made his own revelation on his little-read newspaper-sponsored blog. "I rarely attend board meetings anymore," he wrote. "It’s just not worth my time, or my employer’s time..." Oh? Doesn't the ...

David Asper did more dancing than a chicken on a hotplate when he appeared on CJOB Tuesday morning, to give an update on the new stadium he's building. OB was chasing our story three days earlier in The Black Rod that a sports fan with his ear to the ground had heard the cost of the stadium was wildly out of control, as high as $190 million instead of the $115 million the city and province agreed to pay. Asper came armed with an encyclopedia of excuses to avoid putting a total on the tenders. There were more than 100 tenders, he said. They were very complex. They needed to be evaluated. There might be overlap. Time was the enemy. Blah blah blah. "My sources tell me its in over the $130 million mark," said radio host Richard Cloutier, adding that this meant a proper stadium would cost $150-$170 million. Everyone wants a "proper" stadium, Asper volleyed, and that's why he was counting on the partnership (that would be unelected Premier Greg ...

Maybe, if we can associate failed businessman David Asper with an attraction to large, naked black men, we can generate some news coverage of the biggest story in Winnipeg. This week the city's news outlets rushed to follow CBC's masturbatory interracial sex fantasy story (black man claims he was recruited to have sex with white wife) w hile ignoring the true news scoop by Winnipeg Sun columnist Tom Brodbeck involving a threesome of Winnipeg's most influential men---Asper, Mayor Sam Katz and unelected Premier Greg Selinger. Oh, not that kind of threesome. Sorry. We meant a business arrangement involving the three men, as in getting into bed together to announce a new stadium for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and in the process screwing the taxpayer. As in the CBC sex "scandal", there is no sex. But there is plenty of scandal in Brodbeck's exclusive story. "But Asper says the initial agreement that requires him to cover all cost overruns in the stadium deal ...