Actually, if what I’m about to do has the same effect as what happened when I found The Hold Steady, my friends are going to hate J Roddy Walston and The Business in about a month.

You see, they’re not gonna hate J Roddy because they’re not a massively awesome rock and roll band, rather, they’re going to hate J Roddy Walston and The Business because the new record is all that I’m going to listen to and play for a long, long time once I get it this coming Tuesday, July 27. (It’s streaming on Spinner right now)

But that’s what we do, isn’t it? Don’t we scream it from the rooftops and evangelize on streetcorners and blog and tweet and facebook and hire skywriters to tell everyone about this awesome new band.

I thought that The Hold Steady ruined music for me. Simply because they set the bar SO FUCKING HIGH that most other new bands that I have heard since simply haven’t done much for me. That is, until J Roddy came along. We ran a short “Indie At The Abbey” series a couple of years ago that our friend Joe at Instrumental Analysis put together. J Roddy was on the wishlist for that but a date never materialized. That was when I got my first taste of the Rod. However, it wasn’t until over two years later seeing the boys open for The Hold Steady at The Recher Theater in Towson that I got the first addictive injection of this band.

It’s just straight up, down and dirty, high and mighty, wet and sloppy, fat and happy, dark and dirty, foot stompin, fist pumpin, head banging, beer swillin rock and roll music.

Oh, and Rod plays the piano – but it’s not really piano rock. Though the “dinka-dinka-dinka-dink-dink” of Used To Did is simply as catchy as any jingle I’ve ever heard and it’s a natural show-closer (and usually is).

Look, I can go on and on about this band. And I likely will over the coming months. But their new record comes out on Tuesday. It’s on Vagrant. They’re playing the Khyber in Philly on Tuesday night, Baltimore at the Ottobar on the 31st is the hometown CD Release show. And from there? Sky’s the limit.

I’ve found the new kings of bar rock – and they are J Roddy Walston and The Business.

Another misguided, megalomania-showing move by MFN LDT.

The woman isn’t qualified to make a decision like that. Not after six months on the job. And certainly not with the ongoing turmoil at the Harrisburg School District.

Police in schools (especially schools in an urban, inner-city environment) aren’t uncommon in the post-Columbine days. Even before the Colorado massacre, city police regularly patrolled the hallways of some of the more aggressive schools.

Because schoolchildren whose parents don’t care about what they do at or away from school tend to bring things like guns and knives to school – thereby requiring a police presence to deter bad behavior.

If it’s true that Thompson DID order the police out of Harrisburg schools, then this woman just got six times crazier in my book.

Can things get any worse?

You betcha.

Please do your fellow citizens a favor and share this link. It is, by far, the most in-depth explanation of the quagmire we’re in that you’re going to read anywhere.

It is time to go directly to the citizens of the city and region instead of the political officials providing sound bites for the media. My intent is to shed some light, provide some facts, and identify, from my perspective, the issues and players in our financial crisis.

1. The debt is actually around $283 million. There is also a risk the Authority could be liable for an additional $25 million if it loses the CIT litigation. The revenue from the incinerator, after operating expenses, has been unable to pay debt service. So, the city’s taxpayers, as primary guarantor of the debt, must come up with money to pay the debt service to the bondholders. Since the city is essentially broke, the county, as secondary guarantor for about half the debt, must come up with the funds. If the county defaults, then the bond insurer makes the payments to the bond and note holders. And any entity that makes a payment wants to be reimbursed eventually.

2. There are basic solutions to addressing that debt. Come up with $283 million and retire the debt or come up with $50 to $100 million to reduce the debt so it can be restructured and more manageable. Of course, how to do that is the big issue. Sale of the incinerator could bring in anywhere from $75 million to $180 million- if someone will purchase it. Leasing the parking garages apparently could net up to $100 million. There you go, done deal. Sell incinerator for $180 million and use parking lease proceeds of $100 million and we can go back to our lives. Easier said than done. A more realistic scenario is to pay down the debt by $50 million to $100 million and look to the state financing authority to provide leverage in refinancing or restructuring the outstanding amount. Neil Grover and City Controller have put forth their concepts for reducing the debt. The rest of this post will identify the parties and how I view their respective interests. My intent is to provide transparency without revealing the substance of draft documents being negotiated and better inform the taxpayers so they are able to participate in this discussion. Let’s look at the parties and their interests and issues:

3. Harrisburg Authority- does not have a quorum, can not conduct business. Wants to lead, but has little leverage. The authority staff is competent and the incinerator operator has the facility up and running rather smoothly. The issues are financial not operational. The Authority wants to pay contractors (unfairly being held hostage), fix turbine blade (to generate up to $1 million additional revenue in electric sales), repair steam line (possible $4 million in revenue), increase receipts and revenue (get higher paying waste from outside county), decrease operating expenses (find solution for ash disposal). A proposed amended budget that you haven’t seen reveals it may be able to start paying between $7 and $12 million annually in debt service. Current debt load too high- debt service is approx $22 million annually.

4. This year’s dilemna- $35 mil due in December because authority, city and county kicked the can down the road in 2007 by borrowing to pay debt service for 2007 and 2008. if that amount is refinanced, expect an additional $2 million in debt service.

5. This year’s budget for debt service includes amounts to reimburse the county, city, covanta and bond insurer. So far this year, on behalf of the authority, the city has paid $637,500, county has paid $1,126,254 and the insurer has paid $425,193. Payments from the debt service reserve fund this year total $5,074,733. All of those payments must be reimbursed or replenished. And, about $10 million in debt service is left to be paid before end of year (not including the $35 million notes).

6. City has limited resources to back up its guarantee. What should the city do? Are the recommendations from management consultants enough to deal with this financial crisis? Is there the political will and leadership to put the parking garages and other assets into play? Can the residents sustain a tax increase? Taxes did not increase in the city over the years because these financings typically would kick a few million to the city’s general fund so taxes would not go up.

7. County refuses to raise tipping fees to raise additional revenue for authority, won’t cooperate in enforcing flow control costing authority up to $600,000 annually in revenue, insists on additional $4.90/ton being added to tipping fee to go to county’s office of solid waste, requires its own engineer, financial consultant and attorneys to oversee authority (and get reimbursed by authority).

8. Covanta wants to be repaid on the $22 million it has put out to fix the Barlow mess. It has not been paid the last two quarterly installments of $637,000. So, Covanta will not release any more funds to pay contractors who did work (about $2.2 million).

9. AGM the bond insurer. Publicly has stated it will not reduce principal or interest on the debt. will not allow use of the $3.6 million from the Barlow settlement to be used to pay contractors or fix turbine blade until city comes up with a plan.

There are all kinds of legal issues involving the rights and remedies of each of these parties. The county has sued the city and authority for reimbursement of the money they have paid and wants the court to order the city to budget for the debt service and raise taxes or sell/lease assets. Covanta has put forth a list of its terms it wants in a forebearance agreement. AGM has put forth its terms for a forebearance agreement. The forebearance agreement initially was to buy time to enable the city to come up with a plan, but now the document is turning into the outline of a plan, which explains why it is taking so long to finalize. The authority can only sit on the sidelines until it gets a quorum.

So that is a status report on where things are as of now. Will the mayor and city council continue the stalemate over adding at least a third member to the board? Who will provide the necessary leadership to make the unpopular recommendations to do some combination of leasing or selling assets, raising taxes, raising tipping fees, asking the state to assist in restructuring the debt and/or allowing the filing of chapter 9, or even sell the water system or sewage treatment system?

At least you now know what we know. We promise to keep you informed and hopefully hold public forums on these issues.

Yesterday, I had lunch with an unnamed source who was close to the inner-workings of this years festival and, combined with the information I was given from my source and the knowledge of the industry I hold, the following are my assertions on how the festival failed and how to ensure that never, ever, EVER happens again.

First and foremost-

1. Changing of The Name
Harrisburg’s American Music Fest – despite it’s lackluster calendar- was an annual event that hundreds of thousands of people from the region attended. What’s in a name? Well, simply put, the American Music Fest was called the American Music Fest because it was a pretty good choice of a pretty broad representation of music. No one can argue that the lineup for the previous years American Music Festivals weren’t varied. World, Blues, Gospel, Rock, Country, Bluegrass, Singer/Songwriters were all represented. And if that isn’t “multi-cultural” in itself, then I don’t know what is.

Additionally, I heard from several vendors, attendees and even performers that “Jazz and Multi Cultural Festival” …how do I say this…sounds pretty, um…urban? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but when factoring in the demographics of the greater 200,000 people living in a 30 mile radius, I’d want a festival to have a welcoming name. And really, what was wrong with “American Music Festival”?

What it boils down to – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

2. Mayor Thompson either fired or lost her top fundraisers for Parks and Rec
Gloria Giambalvo and Tina King were a dynamic duo of fundraising awesomeness for the many programs held throughout the year in the city. I don’t have the exact figures, but Gloria and Tina certainly raised considerable amounts of dough for festivals like Kipona and the American Music Fest. And without them on her payroll, who was going to raise the money? Festivals like this are great exposure for corporate contributors and, while there were the usual, low-hanging-fruit like Comcast and Blue Cross, the festival lacked the long-tail funding that it has had in years past.

So, in a nutshell, you get what you pay for. $160,000 isn’t nearly enough to stage a three day, outdoor, riverfront festival designed to bring in a couple hundred thousand attendees.

3. Chuck Schulz- acting director of Parks and Rec- resigned two weeks before the festival.
Word on the street is that the Parks and Rec department whittled down from five or six people in the office to only one – Chuck – and one man simply cannot keep all the plates necessary spinning.

4. There weren’t any local bands on the bill
If you book twenty local acts on a festival like this, they’ll create buzz strong enough to garner the attention of the community. That’s how the Stage on Herr stage at Artsfest succeeded. Regardless of budget or how much (or how little) the acts were getting paid, having a couple dozen local acts playing throughout the weekend equals a couple dozen acts (of four or five people each) telling their entire mailing lists, Facebook friends, Twitter followers and word-of-mouth benefactors where they are going to be.

5. Save the preachers for the churches
I got a text message from a friend at 3:40PM on Saturday the 3rd which said “Main stage had some guy talking about God and the savior. No band. Just prerecorded backing country music. He was inviting members of the 20 people there on stage to share their love of Jesus”.

[facepalm]

Nobody wants to see that at a city-sponsored event. Period.

6. There’s nothing wrong with admitting defeat. In fact, it’s more respectable.
My sources tell me that Linda was urged on multiple occasions to just cancel the event. Save the money and the embarrassment and simply call it off. That would have been the prudent thing to do. But based on the recent departure of the final of her top-level cabinet staff, all signs point to “Linda don’t listen to nobody but Linda…and God” and that’s no way to run a city.

None of these six points contained anything other than realistic, honest-to-goodness analysis. Sure, it’s her first term in office and she’s going to make a few mistakes…but this is getting out of control. It’s time to batten down the hatches and start to admit that she has faults…or the same body who elected her will remove her from office sooner than she can yell “Praise Jesus!”

Addendum one – Read this story about the state-funded Philly Jazz festival and it’s failures.

Sure, the city is in rough shape and whether or not this poorly-renamed “festival” was even going to happen was up in the air until only about a month ago, but you’ve got an event that you’ve known about since BEFORE you took office and there’s been nothing but BAD INK about it since the renaming- it’s time to HIT THE STREETS.

To make matters worse, the “headliner” of the “Jazz and Multi-Cultural Festival” has been announced…but it ain’t much worth getting excited about. The Duke Ellington Legacy Band – a band formed by the Jazz legend’s, ahem, grandchildren. (which, I guess is better than last year’s American Music Fest headliner – an Asia tribute band)

Look, I might not be qualified to comment on the finances of the city or the wacky situation involving the Harrisburg Authority and the incestuous nature that the appointments are taking, but I DO know a thing or two about booking a show and promoting events and I can say with full confidence that the 2010 American Music Fest Harrisburg Jazz and Multi Cultural Festival is going to be a major disappointment unless the new parks and rec director pulls a gigantic Raven out of his hat and brings back Jerry Garcia, John Lennon and Jim Morrison from the dead to headline a show on a stage borrowed from Pink Floyd and has Bill Graham come down from the skies to promote it.

TEN DAYS AWAY and NO LINEUP!?

Are there any bands booked for this thing? I titled the post the way I did because Linda Thompson is hosting this thing- so, who better to ask than the HOST, right?

Get with it, guys. And if you can’t figure out this part of the administration, HIRE someone to do it.