Many leading theatre companies have presented plays online for a corona captive audience over the past few months. My Tony Award goes to the NT production of Frankenstein, an agonizing morality play featuring the rawest physical performance in memory from Jonny Lee Miller.
Tonight at 5pm, the Town Council gets in on the act with a Zoom production of “The Trial of Bill Hudson.”
Hudson is clearly guilty. He stubbornly insisted on sticking to the script (alternately known as the “Land Use Code” or “the law”) when local developer Jack Searle proposed the Town’s first gated community. The planning department preferred a more experimental, more improv approach, featuring a dance number called “The Wiggle Room.”
The Town Council resolved the dispute last week by approving Mr. Searle’s subdivision, whose road system is entirely disconnected from the rest of Town and exempt from Town sidewalk standards… but maintained and repaired with Town tax dollars.
How To Succeed in Business!
Mr. Hudson’s real crime, though, is his opposition to the $80 million in corporate welfare Mr. Searle and his partner David Dronet are seeking for an expansion of The Springs Resort. That expansion proposes 450 luxury hotel rooms and condos. Not a single unit of workforce or a single major employer guaranteeing middle class jobs is offered in return for a quarter century long tax break. At public meetings and in print little Bill (whose middle name is actually “Oliver”) has been willing to approach the developers and ask “Please sir, I want some more” in return for $80 million of subsidies.
What!?
Mr. Hudson further offended the Town by going door to door to get Ballot Measure A put the voters. That measure would give Town voters the right to approve or reject large tax breaks for developers. Curiously, Mr. Hudson’s efforts to give the people some control over their tax dollars have branded him “An Enemy of the People.”
Well, it should be a good show. Planning Director James Dickhoff will again be featured as Iago. Perhaps Planning Commissioners Peter Adams and Jeff Posey will recreate their diva performances from the last Planning Commission meeting.
Sadly, one doubts we will see a return performance from Chris Pitcher, whose fairness, intelligence and gentlemanly demeanor has typecast him out of most roles at Town Hall these days.
I must confess that I am far more of a “pro growth” guy than Mr. Hudson (though one who prefers that developers pay their own bills). Living downtown for twenty years I can readily sympathize with those in Town Hall who look at the empty lots along Hot Springs Boulevard and the river and want to transform them, to inject some life into them.
Dr. Frankenstein would sympathize too.