Actually driving there would have been so problematic due to the poor condition of the city streets, the St. Paul mayor, Melvin Carter, instead jumped out of an airplane clinging to the back of a real parachutist named Sean MacCormac. They landed on Harriet Island, a dramatic entrance to announce the return of Red Bull’s Flugtag, the human-powered flying craft competition during which the typical contestant manages to soar for about six feet.

The event is scheduled for Harriet Island on Sept. 7, last being held there in 2010. I took a kid. We almost saw it. We caught a few occasional flashes of color and a few plops into the water, but the closest we could get was up on Kellogg Boulevard.

Nothing against Red Bull. They go around the country and bring spectacularly ridiculous events to town under the guise of them being a sport. Crashed Ice, for example, was a big hit launched from the steps of the Cathedral for seven seasons beginning in January 2012. This winter, Crashed Ice went to Boston, where the city fathers apparently had enough money in the drawer.

Speaking of the drawer, Red Bull needs $225,000 to stage Flugtag. We don’t have it. The city and its tourism bureau, in their words, are “searching under every seat cushion” for the money, kind of the way we do every time we get a new fee or a bill for fixing a street.

Visit St. Paul chief executive Terry Mattson said, “all we can come up with is $85,000. There’s a finite amount of resources.”

According to the mayor’s spokesman, Peter Leggett, the city slotted $50,000 for a Red Bull event in the 2019 budget.

OK. So there is $135,000 supposedly available. That leaves the city scrambling to come up with $90,000, or approximately $10,000 less than the canceled fireworks would have cost last summer. The mayor has 16 people in his immediate inner circle. They all have impressive titles and clipboards and they attend meetings and do all the things an active inner circle does. Maybe one of them should have piped up that the city shouldn’t commit to things it cannot afford. But they run things pretty thin. Why, there was even a $36,000 disparity between expenses and sponsorships for Carter’s inauguration gala in 2018.

Now, a fellow doesn’t mean to dismiss the festivity of a Red Bull event. They are especially good for the saloon trade. They are wild events, even if they are uniquely unable to be seen. Crashed Ice was a blast but it was tough to find a place to actually see the skaters. I guess the fun was standing around in the cold with a flask with the other people who couldn’t see it.

Flugtag is said to have attracted 100,000 people in 2010. I believe it. I just couldn’t see it. Like I said, every now and then, you could get a glimpse, like looking down from the bluff through the wrong end of a telescope.

A bold prediction is in order. They will find the money for Flugtag. They will put the arm on private donors who are expected to be inexhaustibly charitable, or they will unearth a new department or bureau that we didn’t know existed and, look at that, discover a reserve fund from an excise tax on parking meter coins that amounts to, uncannily, $90,000. Related Articles Soucheray: Defund the police! Wait, where’d the police go?

Soucheray: New to politics, low on cash, no help from the party, John Stromenger makes a run nonetheless

Soucheray: On the stoop of Sacred Heart Church, they do what they can do

When one party so thoroughly dominates the city’s political salon, there is really no telling just how much on the up and up these people are. We can only trust that they are honorable and that the explanation they provide for having discovered the money to save the day for Red Bull is a credible one.

Still say it would be cheaper to have a nice hundred-grand fireworks display on the Fourth of July. There is nothing exclusive about fireworks. You can see fireworks.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneepress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.