Save Our Sonics started out what promises to be a long and tricky campaign in true preseason form last week with a successful, but slightly disorganized rally at Goofy’s Sports Bar in Seattle .
First and Foremost I would like to thank everyone for coming. Several people drove long distances and stuck out the duration of the event, including a pretty boring stint at the meeting with Mark Ferguson and Nick Licata. We need to apologize to these people for the fact that a combination of a scheduling error and terrible traffic kept Slick Watts from arriving as promised. Slick is extremely sorry for his absence.
Secondly the night showed very clearly that we need an event coordinator to step up and manage the details of future get togethers. In preparation for future events we need a person to scope out the location and manage the logistics and details. In this case the commute from Goofy’s to the Council Meeting had us all arriving at somewhat different times. The meeting itself was not appropriate to conduct the raffle we had advertised and we were unable to do so. Had we been better prepared we would have set a place to meet outside of the meeting to conduct our business and enter as a group. We would greatly appreciate it if all attendees shot us an e-mail to volunteer@savourson ics.org so that we can make this up to you.
If you have interest in working with SOS as an event coordinator please contact us ASAP to discuss the matter. We need any help you can offer.
The event did meet our goals despite the setbacks. We had a chance to get our information package out in front of people and it was very well received. Additionally we made a few dollars selling T-Shirts that people seemed to like a great deal and made some new friends. Fans of the Sonics need to participate however. I was disappointed at the attendance and need to re-iterate that we will lose this team if people do not choose to be involved.
While the attendance, of between 25-30 was a disappointment to me personally I spoke with Mark Collins, founder of Save Our Seahawks who advises that this was better than his early turnouts. Those rallies developed into major events with hundreds of attendees as the campaign moved on.
We attended the one-on-one meeting with Councilman’s Ferguson and Licata and were stonewalled a bit on the surface. We were only allowed one question and that was conditioned upon it being a softball. The 20 fans there deserve a huge amount of credit for enduring a pretty monotonous hour for seemingly no purpose. Despite this setback the event was a huge success. We succeeded in being the single largest constituency at the event by a wide margin; our presence was clearly noted by the media, attendees, and politicians. After the event concluded Steve and I were able to book a meeting with Councilman Ferguson and spent about 15 minutes speaking privately with Nick Licata. Licata advised in this conversation that he is basing his argument on the Key Arena Subcommittee report. This report clearly advises the city to retian the Sonics but Licata believes that there are some factual errors in the report. We will be sending him a certified letter on Monday requesting a detailed breakdown of where he believes the errors exist, why, and what he believes the actual numbers to be? Licata also was receptive to a follow up meeting.
Thanks again to those who attended.
Brian Robinson
Save Our Sonics and Storm