Baseball Follies Continue In Wilmington

Another damning piece of journalism has been done that exposes how bad this taxpayer funded stadium effort has become.

(WECT) - The Wilmington Family Entertainment and Baseball Coalition has raised nearly $113,000, short of the original goal of $150,000. Chamber President Connie Majure-Rhett said Tuesday that the group had raised what was necessary for a strong campaign and doesn’t need to reach that original goal.  <-too funny!

The donations are mostly from those who would benefit directly from the city of Wilmington buying land and building a stadium in the downtown area. . . More than half of the donations to the coalition, $65,551, have paid for the services of a Raleigh-based public relations firm, Capstrat. 

Rich Neumann with Mandalay Baseball pitched donating $50,000 to the “Vote Yes” effort. However, the report shows Mandalay has contributed $12,500 to the committee.  The Atlanta Braves also contributed $12,500.

This is absolutely hilarious!  The Chamber fell short of raising the money it told the public it would raise.  They didn’t even believe enough in the area to hire a local vendor so they went to Raleigh to do the PR work.  It’s even funnier that the ONLY people that have given money to the project are really investing in themselves.  That’s a HOOT!

It just gets funnier and you get the feeling that they really know how foolish this prospect is when even they don’t go all in.  Not mentioned here is that council maintained from the beginning that calls ran 50-50 both for and against.  That claim is now laughable as well.

Councilman O’Grady and the rest of the council really look bad on this one.  But not quite as bad as the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce which still can’t present to the public its audited financial statements from 2011.