My wife and I were watching a report on our local evening news last night about the latest fallout from the money pit of Roanoke Rapids, the Randy Parton Theatre.
You recall that the venue was built with State incentives and $21.5 million from the city itself. Carolina Journal and other conservative media have documented this waste of taxpayer money (http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=4031).
Anyway, the news says that the Theatre's budget is getting slashed to save money. "Headliner" Randy Parton himself will have to take a pay cut in his salary from $1 million/year to $250 thousand/year. "That's fair," I thought at first.
Then the news said that Randy Parton's performance schedule would be slashed too, from four shows per week to 36 shows per year.
Wait a minute. The math doesn't add up to me. Sure he's getting a pay cut in annual salary from his namesake theatre.
However, for a million dollars he would've at least performed 200 shows per year (at 4/week, and I'll give him two weeks off). That would've been $5,000 per show. Now he gets $250,000 for 36 shows. That's $6,944 per show.
So, Parton really gets paid more for each performance. He's getting paid >25% more per show even as he works less. Of course, as part of his contract, he still gets a free house and car. Not a bad deal.
That's a better deal, really, than what the citizens of NC (at least $500 thousand in State funds spent on marketing for the Theatre) and especially Roanoke Rapids (which borrowed that $21.5 million) are getting.
Not bad for a famous country singer's little brother with one top 200 hit, ages ago.
Editor's Note: Rob Benningfield is a Systems Engineer with Alcatel-Lucent and resides in west Raleigh with your blogger and their son, and dog.
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