The city of Joplin has been abuzz for the past week  due to controversy over a 9/11 memorial concert which was slated to bring country music star Travis Tritt to Joplin.

 Slated for Landreth Park, Tritt, along with two local bands, was booked to play a free show dedicated to the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

Immediately following announcement of the free concert however, citizens of Joplin began to question the method by which the show would be paid.

Rumors spread rapidly that the money used to pay the bill were coming directly from Joplin’s tornado relief fund. Citizens were outraged.

Apparently $60,000 was going to be taken out of the tornado relief fund to pay Tritt and the other performers. When Tritt first caught wind of these rumors, he immediately backed out of the show and returned the $30,000 payment his booking agency had received up front.

The city of Joplin, City Manager Mark Rohr and Director of the Convention and Visitors’ Bureau Patrick Tuttle seemed to have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar; especially on Tuesday when the Joplin Globe reported that Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster’s office would be launching an investigation into the matter.

It has since been announced however, that the money was not going to come out of the tornado relief fund, and the city had a plan which it is confident would have made any “loaned” money back, and then some.

Our question is, why was there a misperception to begin with?

Was it the citizens’ fault in not checking their facts? Or did city administrators unintentionally mislead their citizens?

Should Rohr, Tuttle and city spokesperson Lynn Onstot have made it more clear that their plan was to borrow money, and that they had a solid plan on how to make it back?

Should Tritt have asked a few questions before assuming the city was going to pay him with donated tornado funds and pulling out?

We’re not sure just who slipped up, but without a doubt, someone did. And the city of Joplin missed out on some big bucks because of it.

Rohr claims that all of the up-front money used for the concert had already been recouped through sponsorship pledges for the show.

If that’s true, Joplin missed a gross opportunity to make even more money than it would have “borrowed”, regardless of where that loan came from.

If half of the expenses had been made back just in sponsorship dollars, revenue from on-site donations, a cable TV deal and text-to-give services that were in the works, as well as vendor profits at the concert, could have made it like stealing money for the city leaders.

Then again, we suppose it was thoughts like that that got them in trouble to begin with.