Caldwell lost his cool with surf league and let meet get away

There was Mayor Kirk Caldwell at one of his dog-and-pony news conferences, portraying himself as the voice of reason in a dispute with the World Surf League over scheduling dates on the North Shore.

Worried the WSL might follow through on a threat to take its events elsewhere, Caldwell called it “an incredibly important organization” and implored, “Please don’t yank your contests.”

“Cool heads,” the mayor appealed. “We’ve heard your concerns and we’d like to see what we can do to make it better in the future. But let’s not hurt folks in the short term.”

It was too late; a day later, the WSL announced it won’t hold its Billabong Pipeline Masters in Hawaii in 2019 and is reviewing other Hawaii contests.

One wonders if this spectacle might have turned out differently if Caldwell had taken his own advice and acted in the first place with a cool head instead of a swelled head puffed up with self-importance.

It started when the WSL, whose events draw large crowds of residents and visitors and provide opportunities for local surfers, asked to move the Billabong Pipeline Masters into the January 2019 dates it had initially requested for the Volcom Pipe Pro.

It sought no added days, essentially just a name change for the event, which WSL considered “an administrative technicality.”

Caldwell’s response was hostile and haughty, accusing WSL of trying to “usurp” the permitting process spelled out in his precious 24 pages of regulations.

He said the group missed deadlines and was being “unfair” to other surf organizers, insultingly suggesting that WSL Chief Executive Officer Sophie Goldschmidt was new to the job and didn’t know how things worked.

He complained the group had — gasp! — tried to meet to resolve the dispute without an appointment.

Goldschmidt told Pacific Business News: “We feel pretty disrespected, and I don’t know why we don’t get the support. We are just asking for some consistency because it is really hard to run a global league when you have all this uncertainty. No other local government and city puts us in this situation.”

Then came Caldwell’s bizarre news conference Wednesday, at which his pages of scheduling rules suddenly were not so sacrosanct.

He said he’d name a committee to write new regulations with orders to “take the rules, rip ’em up, throw ’em away and start again with whole cloth.”

In his original letter to WSL rejecting the schedule change, Caldwell lectured, “We are perplexed that you would jeopardize your relationship with Hawaii on a minor change.”

He didn’t get it that WSL could view the city’s histrionics with the same perplexity.

By resorting to drama instead of working the problem with a cool head, Caldwell managed to turn a matter that both sides described as “minor” into a potentially major loss.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.