Puzzled by Roger and friends

I would recommend reading the article in the Ottawa Citizen of today (Sunday May 30) entitled "The Lansdowne Four".
The prime spokesman for the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group, Roger Greenberg, is quoted as saying "What I'm not used to is people taking facts and deliberately changing them to suit their purposes. I've never seen that before. But I guess that's part of the game. I'm just not used to playing that game."
I think Mr. Greenberg would do everyone a big favour by going further and listing the specific facts and how he considers that those facts have been distorted.
Another point that Mr. Greenberg could usefully elaborate is the fine distinction he is making in his statement "This is clearly not a sole-source contract. This was an unsolicited proposal."
First, I'm not sure that I understand the difference. Maybe Mr. Greenberg has a valid point; I just don't understand what that point is.
Second, I find the idea that it is an unsolicited proposal is hard to square with a passage earlier in the same article, a passage worth quoting:
The way Greenberg tells it, OSEG learned that its modest plan to lease Frank Clair Stadium from the city was a non-starter after meeting with Mayor Larry O'Brien and city manager Kent Kirkpatrick in the fall of 2007.
"Their comeback to us was, 'Guys, listen. We're not going to spend upwards of $100 million in taxpayers' money to fix up the stadium so you can play 10 games of football a year'" Greenberg recounts.
If the businessmen wanted to propose something more comprehensive, O'Brien and Kirkpatrick told them, the city would listen.
This raises two questions --
(a) Does the discussion with the Mayor and the City Manager constitute solicitation of an offer? If it does, I guess the "unsolicited proposal" description does not apply.
(b) Is the timing (autumn of 2007) correct? It is worth remembering that Council's approval of a design-to-build competition for Lansdowne was in late November of 2007. The announcement of the CFL conditional franchise was in March 2008. The suspension of the design-to-build competition was May/June 2008. The Lansdowne Live proposal indicating OSEG was moving beyond a simple stadium rental was revealed on October 17. 2008. If the timing in the Citizen article is correct, the most senior elected official of the city plus the most senior member of city staff had been in discussions with OSEG for a year prior to the public statement of the intention by OSEG to submit an "unsolicited proposal".
I share with Mr. Greenberg the desire to have the facts stated clearly. Those facts can be interpreted differently, but we continue to need facts.

Was there a wow?

Yesterday (May 27) there was a presentation by architects about the lovely buildings that could be built at Lansdowne Park. Mayor O'Brien said he had told the architectural team that he wanted people to shout out "WOW!" on seeing the ideas presented.
Actually no one stood up and shouted wow. Some of us thought that if we were about to be given a big gift by the city we also would take the time to draw some pretty pictures.
No one mentioned at the event that it is proposed the city's taxpayers pay 100% of the cost of the sinuous stadium. No one noted that the city is to kick in millions to provide parking for the shoppers in the stores at Lansdowne.
As usual, no one asked the obvious questions. Here is a little question for everyone to puzzle over. The public is invited to comment on the lovely pictures between June 1 and June 13. But on June 9, the staff report (plus all the other outstanding reports???) is to be tabled for consideration leading to the eventual Council discussion. So the question is -- why would anyone submit a comment between June 9 and June 13 since the comment will obviously be disregarded? In fact, why comment at all, since the conclusion of the staff report has already been written and staff are now hard at work searching their thesaurus for words of praise to apply to the so-called Lansdowne Partnership Plan. [Maybe "divinely inspired" would be too much but "approaching heaven on earth" might strike the right tone.]
If someone gave me land to build a house, chances are I could build a nicer house than if I had to pay for the land. Isn't that all the pretty pictures show?
Incidentally, from talking to architects, I gather the technical term for what was displayed yesterday is "eye candy".

Launching the campaign

I've just filed my nomination papers and am in the process of launching my website at http://www.brocklebank.ca/. One of the features of the website is provision for a series of "issue papers". These are designed to make my views available and to stimulate debate.
The first such paper is "Plan B for redevelopment of Lansdowne Park". The paper argues that we should take a step-by-step approach to the redevelopment project and it asserts that this would allow for more rapid improvement of Lansdowne while reducing the risk to the City. I hope people will read my ideas and make comments.
Let the debate begin!

Bob