Turd-Polishing

Desperate to keep the stadium finance “plan”…er, afloat, the state is making another big push to try to sell “E-Pulltabs”:

In Duluth on Tuesday night, about 35 charities and bar owners showed up for a chance to test-drive all the electronic pulltab and bingo games now available in Minnesota. They got tips from charitable gambling leaders and bars along the North Shore who use them. They received the latest data from state officials on Minnesota’s most popular e-gambling counties, the effect on charity collections and more.

“I’ve seen the machines before, but I’ve never tried them,” said Duluth bar owner Mike Ronning, checking out the electronic pulltabs. “It’s fun. I just don’t know if it’s right for my place.”

The upshot:  people are still keeping them at arms length.

One wonders if we might have saved a whole lot of trouble doing thisbeforethey made them the key revenue-generator in the state’s Viking stadium jamdown.

5 thoughts on “Turd-Polishing

  1. And in other government funded stadium news, the Lowertown project (for the not even ‘Low A’ St. Paul Saints) has added over 8 million taxpayer dollars to the 54 million dollar cost of the project. Seems they are going to have to haul away the top 20 feet of polluted soil rather than the top 8 feet. They did the boring after all the cost numbers were in.

    I would think it would have been prudent to do a soil boring before the numbers were set, but that’s just me.

  2. Rikkor, its not like its their money, so why do full due diligence.

    Kind of like the state of Minnesota spending an extra $6,000,000 on the Stillwater bridge work (12% higher) by hiring an out-of-state contractor who said he will bring in more out-of-state people with darker skin hues than the in-state contractor would do. Its not the state’s money, so what do they care.

  3. Brace yourselves for a shock! Word on the street is that the budget for the Saint Paul Saints new stadium has already been blown by 15%, and not a shovel has hit the dirt.

    Seems the engineering consultant underestimated the clean up cost by 50%….50%! Where do they find these doofs; and more importantly, why will they pay them?

    They need another $2.6 mil on top of that to make the staduim more excellent. Figure it out yourselves, I ain’t paying for any of it.

  4. I understand that Governor Dayton now wants to order Zygi’s new stadium from Amazon. However he needs to complete the order before July 1 2013. That way we will save on the sales tax. Plus, we’ll get free delivery since the order is over $25.

    He is currently pushing for a collective bargaining agreement between Amazon’s employees and SEIU.

  5. There is some nice farm land on the far east side of Hudson Wisconsin. On a rail line, just off I-94. If I were a developer, I’d look at doing some warehouse/business park there. Can provide just in time deliveries to the Twin Cities, but without the warehouse inventory tax.

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