“Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice.

Though this exclamation occurs when Alice begins to grow to nine feet tall, it could be about the strangeness surrounding the proposed downtown arena. Indeed the whole issue has begun to get curiouser and curiouser.

On the one hand, we have Daryl Katz, who has gained a great deal from free-market competition, suddenly becoming a monopoly capitalist.

Though he thinks his people can run an arena better than Northlands, he wants a non-competition clause in his agreement with the city.

Embracing non-competitiveness as an operating principle seems odd for someone who owns a sports team.

On the other hand, we have Northlands, which owes $56 million to the city, refusing to open its books so the city can see if it is likely to see any of that dough. One would think Northlands would be more than willing to show that it can survive without the Edmonton Oilers as a tenant.

Instead, we have yet another made-in-Edmonton example of having a handful of gimme and a mouthful of much-obliged for our tax dollars.

As if all that were not enough to make you think you too have gone through the looking glass, it seems as if there are additional costs for a downtown arena that nobody has talked about until now.

The costs for a 104 Avenue skywalk and LRT access were never mentioned when this plan was put to the public. These costs are estimated at an additional $32 million.

Given the city’s track record on accurate construction costing, I wouldn’t take that number to the bank.

I started out thinking a downtown arena would be a good thing for Edmonton. I was even supportive of the city putting some money in to ensure that it happened. But now I am not so sure. The whole issue seems to have been handled quite badly, and information about what the arena would cost and how the city would benefit seems to change daily.

Unfortunately, this issue is a microcosm of the kind of fiscal and communications mismanagement that is a hallmark of this city. I think we are taking our civic clues from the Mock Turtle: “Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with, and then the different branches of arithmetic – Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.” Me, I agree with Alice: “It would be nice if something made sense for a change.”