City/County-Sponsored Block Party To Promote Baseball Stadium
(This is the text of a letter to the News Sentinel that I sent on 16 July 2021. They published it on 4 August 2021, well after the event discussed. It seems clear, from the sponsoring of the event by the Knox County and the City of Knoxville, that they have abandoned all pretense of “considering” funding the stadium and have moved to flacking for it. I think that the same can be said of the News Sentinel itself.)
On July 14 the News Sentinel informed us that on July 17 there was to be a Smokies Stadium information session and block party paid for by the city and county, at a city-owned parking lot located under an overpass. City and county employees – but apparently no Smokies employees – were to be available to answer questions about the new stadium.
This announcement just screams that the fix is in, that the project is a done deal and it is time to start the celebrations – the sponsoring of the event by the city and county, both by financing it and by promoting the stadium to the public, shows that these entities are taking it for granted that the stadium is a go. Further, combining an information session with a party attended by children shows that this is not really an attempt to convey information but an attempt to associate baseball and the stadium with fun and free stuff. How much information can be conveyed effectively outdoors, under a noisy underpass, with the cries of children close at hand?
This is so inappropriate. The city and county are essentially throwing their authority and our taxpayer dollars into the effort to undercut any public resistance to the stadium project. It is clear that they are not trying for an even-handed approach prior to approval by the city council, the county commission, and the obviously tame Sports Authority.
Thus it seems that the point of the so-called information session is really to minimize public opposition to having the public pay for Mr. Boyd’s stadium by providing bread and circuses to the public.
