[troutman]

City of Glendale - Budget Workshop transcript:

http://hfboards.hockeysfuture.com/sh...148345&page=12

Mayor Elaine Scruggs: Arena Management…Councilmember Alvarez’s favorite idea/subject. Page 294 we have $20 million plugged in for next year. I will not support a budget that has $20 million plugged in for arena management… and I’m not just going to end it right there. I’m gonna tell you… um… Everybody in this room knows, I have been asking for information since June… that I have repeatedly done this in every way, shape or form possible and have gotten nothing. Last time at our meeting of February 28th, I think it was, everyone agreed you would get it on March 20th. I watched… listened to the meeting on March 20th… not one word about it. So I’m going to come up with my own number.

Mayor Elaine Scruggs: Ok… first of all… what I am offering my comments on the draft, the draft budget that the staff presented to us when we started all this back in February…. So my comments are on that. The $11 million is what I think we would spend instead of the $20 million that is in the book, based on the figures I have had from the arena from past years and based on what Phoenix spends for U.S. Airways. It can’t be zero… we own a building… there are expenses… somebody has to run it… and pay the salaries and so forth… So instead of $20 million, I am suggesting $11 million. Separately, I am suggesting that anybody who is interested join me in writing a letter to Gary Bettman… saying release us from that $20 million that is in escrow and let us pay you over time because you have just about….

http://translate.google.com/translat...le-135244.html

It has not been kind to Gary Bettman and the NHL accusing them of leading the city in a financial hole without ensuring that the team would move does not.

"We have fooled" (They misled us), the mayor said on Tuesday during the next budget review of his city. We were held hostage for years. "