Money Talks, Rural Arizona Loses

UPDATE: See HERE for the update to this story.

The Arizona Centennial Copper Chopper has just been pulled at the last minute from the Parker 425 “Downtown Experience.” Apparently, Karl Eller (Google him) has been a huge donor to the Arizona Centennial Commission and has just now requested the Copper Chopper be in attendance at the “Waste Management Open Golf Tournament” in…..wait for it…….PHOENIX. Yes, friends, once again rural Arizona gets dumped on by the “Great State of Maricopa.”

I am, quite frankly, tired of it. The bureaucracy of the almighty dollar takes its toll on all of our small towns. Not to mention all the trouble I had in getting the commitment in the first place. Not only did the Centennial Commission hire an external entertainment company to book the events for the Copper Chopper, but they were incompetent as well. It took five months to get an answer from them and there were no bookings for my date. Until today.

Now, at the very last minute Karl Eller wants the Copper Chopper at the Phoenix Open. It must be nice to have all that money, have a college named after you (Eller College of Management, U of A).

It’s not his fault, though. This was sheer incompetence on the part of the Arizona Centennial Commission and R-Entertainment. It was utter chaos from the very beginning when we were having meetings all over the State of Arizona. However, they made it perfectly clear that there would be no money for our local events but they wanted us to dedicate our area events to the Centennial and promote the State of Arizona as a whole. Well what happened to rural Arizona in this process?

We honored the State of Arizona last weekend with a wonderful parade and street party sponsored in whole by the Town of Parker. The Wells Fargo Wagon came and led our parade carrying our only centurion to our Downtown area. Gee, a national corporation contributed to our celebration of the Statehood of Arizona and our own state mascot can’t support our biggest event of the year.

I know it’s all about the money. But at what point will it be fair?

UPDATE: The Commission has decided to honor our event after all. See HERE.