If, hypothetically, the council could take control of the arena and stadium (free of the SMC debts, obviously), that would be attractive, imo. I'm not a fan of private control of public assets - and this is an extreme example of why.
The morning after though, with current tenancy agreements, could the council run the stadium at something approaching breakeven? I guess it would be hard for you to speculate, especially publically, but I imagine it's a thought that has at least crossed a few council minds.
Presumably there'd need to be some re-negotiation, even if it was viable - a council-run SMC buying a tranche of Hull FC season tickets wouldn't work, I assume.
If it can be run at breakeven, then it should be under public control. And if it can't the be run at breakeven or better, then ultimately it'll probably have to covered by the public purse, as no private company will take it on - not one that isn't trying to leverage control to gain ownership anyway.
Running an out and out community asset like the arena at a loss wouldn't be problem. The stadium tenants are important civic institutions, and should be supported, but ongoing 'subsidy' would be politically difficult for all parties.
As somebody suggested in an earlier post, I think, an independent audit would be interesting.

HCC should take back ownership of the KC, sell or lease it to a third party (who are just a go between) then let both teams take out 100 year leases on the place with joint ownership on a pro-rata peppercorn basis but both these teams are responsible for the upkeep (pro-rata again). Then all three clubs in Hull would be one a even keel

When the KC first opened, Hull were expecting gates of 8k and city hadn't averaged more than 10k for 30 years.
Small profits were still made by the SMC, despite the so called over generous subsidies both Hull and city had negotiated (to prevent either club going bust again).
Then Mr Allam took over.
Surely profits can be achieved again by an SMC, either under the full control of the council, or a totally independent body.

Of course the stadium can be run at break even or pretty much no sporting club would be able to afford a stadium. We have the advantage of no build cost mortgage to service, a premier league football club and a well supported SL team. Add in events and the like and the KC should be generating a tidy profit if the books weren't being massaged. When you factor in the lack of non match day income, lack of stadium sponsor income, lack of match day food and drink sales income etc. we pay well over the odds for the kc. Would be interesting to have a proper comparison to the dw and the john smiths, neither of which cost their clubs anywhere near what ours does and neither of which appear to be a financial mess

That would be reasonable.

This, having paid for the stadium etc outright it leaves you a lot to play with in terms of attracting use of all the facilities even accounting for the community stuff.
I suspect City haven't even being paying their way pro rata compared to FC for some period of time, not according to Allam's figures anyway

I wonder how many applicants there have been for the manager's job.. in small print, 3 month probation with one month rolling contract

The stadium is older now and if one set of set of accounts can be politicised, so can another. It's very plausible, but 'surely' is possibly pushing it on the limited available evidence, imo.

A lot of clubs do run at a loss though. Even those that run at a profit, it's hard to define how much of that is attributable to the stadium. You need one, in the same way a taxi driver needs a cab, but it's an expense to tax, maintain, put fuel in and insure it - it's driving it that makes the money.
And my point was can it be run at minimal risk to the public purse with current tenancy agreements? It doesn't really matter how successful Hull and City are, if the SMC doesn't breakeven - unless they voluntarily chuck more money in. Even in it's days of profitability, it was only modestly profitable and adding in events didn't help much.
To return to my rubbish taxi analogy, if I rent a car to a driver on very generous terms, but remain responsible for servicing it, petrol etc, then even if he or she is doing well, I can still lose money.

Yep.

Incidentally, when was the last time the Allams made a public statement on this case?

Not since the pitch went down and certainly not since the letters were leaked to Angus Young.

Nothing in response to the legal letter from the council and nothing further to Brady's appearances on Humberside. In fact James Hogarth repeated several times his 'disappointment' that the Allams were unresponsive to calls to invite them onto Sportstalk on Tuesday. He didn't try to hide his disgust at their reticence.

Where are they?