Andy Marlette

News Journal Cartoonist

Make the motion! Second the motion! Withdraw the motion! Motion is the potion!

Lord, help us, because that's pretty much what it was like to sit through the Community Maritime Park Associates board meeting last week. Jim Reeves, who is chairman of the 14-member board, oversaw the meeting sort of like Walter Matthau oversaw batting practice in "The Bad News Bears." Where Matthau drank beer to get through it, Reeves had a half dozen empty cans of TAB stacked up by the end of his ordeal.

OK, maybe I'm exaggerating the goofiness. Maybe.

There were nice, smart folks in the room. And I did learn a few things about our glorious park by the bay. Rotary is planning a playground with a water park. And near that there will be a statue of the city's original super-mayor, Vince Whibbs. Rumor even has it that in the spirit of classical equestrian sculpture, Whibbs might be triumphantly posed in a 1958 Pontiac.

But the meeting fell off the "Upside" when Scott Remington, an attorney representing Quint Studer's Blue Wahoos, stepped up to the plate to respond to a "demand letter" from the board's lawyer, Lisa Minshew. And by "demand" she meant "stick 'em up."

Apparently, the board thinks the Wahoos should be coughing up more cash to the CMPA for their use of the stadium. The Wahoos say they already pay more than most every other team in their league. They say if the CMPA needs more money, it should get more tenants. Or, perhaps, actually host some other events.

Besides, the team says it has a contract. End of story.

Still, like a Redneck Riviera Archimedes, Remington proceeded to drop some math that seemingly shredded the CMPA's own shaky, shellgame-like financial calculations. When asked for the numbers that backed up their figures, the board could not produce any.

Come on, CMPA! Every sixth grade pre-algebra student knows you have to show your work.

Not to mention that greeting your prize tenant with the same warmth you'd extend to a suspected ISIS terrorist probably isn't ideal business protocol.

This simply can't be the best and brightest way to oversee downtown's most important piece of public property. If it is, then Pensacola, we got a problem.

It seems way too similar to the mayor's shakedown of the Fish House a little while back. I thought this was a conservative town. What's up with all the public entities trying to Tony Soprano private sector businesses?

Instead of fighting to squeeze a few more drops out of the Wahoos, maybe the CMPA should go find some other milk cows. They certainly have some empty parcels of grass down there to put them on.