Austin’s Daily Commentary – November 1, 2023

Austin: Voters in Augusta are contemplating the future of the James Brown Arena. Early voting has been underway for a while and the entire election wraps up next Tuesday. The question, will we spend or will it get to spend a half a penny sales tax over the course of the next number of years to finance a complete refurbishment of that building, Basically a new James Brown Arena? Or go back to plan B?

Well, exactly what plan B is, is yet to be determined. That's what a lot of folks need to consider. If this thing does not pass, what is the future of the current James Brown Arena? It is too small to really spend a lot of money fixing up, and it's too old to do much else too. So what do you do with it and what do you do moving forward as far as attracting events to the arena?

These are all very, very important questions that there is no good answer to as far as I've been able to tell whether or not you want to spend the money to build a new arena. Well, that's, I guess, an individual a matter of individual taste and politics. But there is really no Plan B in place as to what happens if this thing does not pass.

The future of the James Brown Arena as we know it is bleak. As a matter of fact, it's almost non-existent. And I don't think anyone that's being intellectually honest is going to disagree with that. That's why I and many others are urging the passage of the arena referendum, and I'm hoping that common sense will prevail. And you understand you have to do it now or it probably will never get done.

And that's the comment I'm Austin Rhodes, AM 580/95.1 FM, News Talk WGAC.