The SouthsideCentral production staff was cleaning up the back room during the snowstorm and decided to roll out the ol’ OddsMakers! board. Lovely. That meant that the SouthsideCentral writing staff got busy and came up with four propositions that I have to go predict. Double Lovely. Heh… let’s get started!
I almost dread to look at what I’ve got to slap percentages on. Oh well. Let’s take a look.
Hey, not too bad. I’d almost forgotten about a few of these. What’s our first one?
“More than two new people are elected to Danville City Council in May” – Our writers are smart. They know that Buddy Rawley isn’t going to run for reelection and there’s doubts if Sherman Saunders will. Larry Campbell, Lee Vogler & Fred Shanks are the other three. Vogler’s already in, I’m 100% confident on Campbell and I’m 80% on Shanks running again. Danville’s historical data shows that incumbents have a very strong chance of reelection. Rawley’s replacement would be #1 and I’ll give an outside chance for someone to knock off one incumbent (or replace Saunders if he didn’t run again). But getting a third new person on Danville City Council? I just don’t see it. I’m saying there’s only a 3% chance to get a majority of new people out of the upcoming election field. NEXT!
“Danville Regional Medical Center will do a ‘Meet Alan Larson’ community event before May 26th” – Not only are our writers smart, they have long memories. May 26, 2015 was when Lifepoint announced that Alan Larson would be the new CEO of Danvilly Regional Medical Center. If you remember when Lifepoint put Eric Deaton in the job, it wasn’t but a few months later that the hospital rented out the Stratford Conference Center for a big “Meet Eric Deaton” event. I know that was because that the community had just seen yet another hospital CEO swear his allegiance to the Danville area then leave two days later. That would be Jerel Humphries if you’re keeping score at home.
Alan Larson has quietly slid into the hospital CEO job with very little publicity. I’d bet that a majority of people in the region wouldn’t even recognize him. That seems to be just fine with Lifepoint & DRMC, so I really don’t see them wanting a big shindig that puts a neon sign out for the entire community. Especially for the small subset of people in the community that believe that DRMC is a deathtrap filled with people who don’t care about patients. Yeah, those kind of people. Lifepoint knows how to control the message, folks. I’ll be generous and say a 19% chance of that big party happening before Larson’s one year anniversary because I may have just given them an idea. Heh. NEXT!
“The Galileo ‘Blue Ribbon School’ flag will fly before the end of March” – Yeah. I had forgotten about that too. The city. The flag ordinance. The Stupid Flag Ordinance to some people. Heh. This is a problem that could be solved in a few days if the school management and city management would work together on the problem. The um… outrage at the flag issue burned hot for a few weeks, died out, rekindled and is currently colder than the polar vortex. Maybe this item on the OddsMakers! board will get a school board member (or Stan Jones) interested in making something work out. But it’s now budget time and I’m betting that the city isn’t going to be too happy with working out a flag exception until the entire flag incident is totally forgotten. I’m going to be real and say that there’s only a 7% chance of that happening before the end of March. NEXT!
“The City of Danville will reach a settlement with Duke Energy on the coal ash spill before the end of March.” – Sheesh. I’m out of breath having to just read that one. The coal ash settlement lawyer that Danville hired hasn’t been back to a council meeting in at least six months. We don’t even get our monthly Davis Montgomery from Duke Energy reports anymore at council meetings. The city tried to shake some money out of Duke Energy to help sponsor the “Reimagine That” rebranding event and Duke Energy said “Fuhgeddaboutit”. The New Improved Abreu-Grogan Park will be finished soon and I’m betting that’s going to be the majority of Duke Energy’s “Oops. We blew it.” community service and payments. Danville will get reimbursed for all of their expenses during the coal ash incident and Duke’s still on the hook if some unseen disaster ever arises, but the chances of that happening are approaching diddlysquat. Sooner or later, the lawyers are going to officially get rich, Danville will get a new set of lawn darts and it will all be dumped in a 4:30 PM Friday news release (where bad news gets thrown out to die). I’m saying there’s a 29% chance of it happening in the first quarter of 2016.
That’s it! We’re done. Let’s take a look at the Final OddsMakers! Board…
Hey! Green chalk! I like it. This edition of OddsMakers! is 100% over. We’ve got more coming up on SouthsideCentral!
Leave a Reply