Imagine getting up at the end of the second act of Macbeth to applaud the success of the title character who has followed the advice of his clever wife and successfully orchestrated his rise to the throne by finding a couple of fall guys to cover his assassination of the king.
Then imagine leaving the theatre at that point, feeling good about the triumph of our hero, completely ignorant of the following three acts of darkness and despair that concludes the Shakespearian tragedy.
The same thing happened Monday night in city council chambers.
After mayor and council unanimously approved making the project one of the city's priority developments, the supporters of the Prince George Regional Performing Arts Centre Society applauded and then cheerfully headed home.
Yet the story of the performing arts centre has only just begun and it's off to a rough start.
The society had asked city council to make the arts centre the top priority development. That suggestion was swatted away by city manager Beth James, who said passing such a motion could hamper council's ability to approve other important developments in the future and that staff are already preparing a strategic document on future capital projects.
That's nonsense. Setting a top priority doesn't exclude fulfilling less expensive and lower priority items along the way. The homeowner that makes paying down the mortgage the most important item on the agenda can still save for retirement and go to Vegas for a holiday.
Council took that excuse from James as gospel, cutting the proposal off at the knees in the process. Now the performing arts centre joins a grocery list of proposals, with no recognition as being the most important item on that list. Even though the mayor and each councillor said now is the time to move this project forward, the city manager didn't get the message.
Coun. Cameron Stolz asked repeatedly for a deadline from James for staff to bring back a report on the budget for the arts centre, which would include a possible location for the facility and funding sources for its construction. Instead, he was deflected by the city manager, who refused to commit to a time frame without having seen the work the society has already done.
That's as ridiculous as a reporter telling the editor that deadline is when the story is finished and not a moment before. With no deadline, city staff will complete this report and present it to council whenever they're ready, not whenever council wants.
In other words, council says the time is now but the people who work for council say the time is when they say so.
Furthermore, the arts centre society has already spent $240,000 of taxpayer dollars answering all of those questions about budgets, costs and so on. City staff has simply been asked to write an executive summary of those studies, updating any stale figures and facts, not a unique and timeless five-act work of literature.
Meanwhile, it took more than an hour for council to reach its foregone conclusion, during which every councillor stressed their support for the performing arts centre development, with one huge condition.
If there's funding.
Stolz and Mayor Shari Green were more blunt but more truthful in their support than their colleagues. Green said she simply doesn't see senior levels of government having the appetite at this time for a cultural project. Canadian municipalities have been pushing the federal government for money to build bridges and update water and sewer systems, not art centres, Stolz pointed out.
The performing arts centre society has done a great job justifying the plan and providing details for how it would work. In the end, however, Monday's vote was little more than mayor and council saying they are committed to their commitment.
The prospects for the construction of the performing arts centre, at least in the next two to three years, are grim unless other levels of government step up to bring Great Birnham Wood to Dunsinane.
Hey, it happened in Macbeth.
Maybe it can happen here, too.
