Posted on 12/16/2004 1:51:17 PM PST by B Knotts
This is particularly true of a football stadium, which is rarely used more than two dozen times in a calendar year (and only if it attracts outdoor concerts by giants in the music industry like U-2, the Rolling Stones, etc.). The exception to this rule would be a state-of-the-art venue that is frequently used to host events that attract a lot of visitors from outside the immediate area (college bowl games, NCAA Final Four, etc.).
And I don't disagree with those sentiments. But I also don't mind Government making money with long term investments so that it does not have to Tax Me.
If the Government can build a facility that returns revenue (above costs) year after year than I say go for it. Its fewer taxes for me to pay, and the enthusiasts wether baseball fans or Small boat harbor users pay for it willingly out of fees.
If it can't make money and pay off construction costs in a reasonable time then I'm not for that. There is also the risk of getting saddled with a white elephant if the team folds.
Ah, the old Zero Sum argument. (Long discredited I might add)
Many projects DO pay for themselves, Petco / Safeco / PacBell, etc. (I can't say much about Football stadiums, many of those are dual use in order to generate enough revenue.
There are examples (Safco) where this has worked very well, and others where it has failed miserably. The devil is in the details.
We may be parsing words on that point. I stated no "tax increases", which is not to be confused with no "tax dollars". I believe there exists within most cities enough funds to set aside some dollars to get such a deal going (seed money).This money could come from general funds and not require a new tax. The City would still need to be involved to oversee the design, location, conduct negotiations, etc.
The suggestion on the team paying for the up keep is a good one.
One stadium/city deal that got my goat is Bank One Ball Park (BOB) in Phoenix. The city of Phoenix passed a law that set a tax on car rentals at Phoenix airport to pay for at least a portion of the stadium cost. That means as a car renter in Phoenix (I go there often on business), I am paying for their stadium!
Minor note: I was responsible for setting up a National meeting (36 attendees, 8-10 car rentals). I was going to consider Phoenix, but eliminated it, after I found out about this little gem.
Well said.
I agree with this, in that I think the team should repay any construction costs over time. I believe one senator introduced legislation to that effect which would have banned any outright Gifts to major leagues.
But situations where the team pays back construction and operation costs as well as a piece of the gate are clearly not a gift.
I don't mind new taxes and would generally prefer an Expiring Dedicated Sales Tax for this. That way it goes away at a point in time or after x million collected.
The problem with general revenue allocation is that even after the Facility starts returning revenue (assuming it does) the general tax burdon never declines.
I Like VISABLE taxes if taxes must be used at all.
I agree.
Yeah, and now look at it! The place is a wreck! ;-)
The State of New Jersey has been going through various iterations of this process in recent years to rationalize spending a pile of taxpayers' cash on a new arena for the New Jersey Nets (NBA) and Devils (NHL). The numbers often show that "arena will pay itself off in X years," but when you look at them in more detail you start to get a good picture of just how easy it is to manipulate the numbers.
One of the ways they do this is by including the income tax revenue from the team's players, front office staff, etc. in the "benefit" side of the equation. That might be technically correct from a financial standpoint, but you never see that rationale used in any other context. Using this argument, I could go out tomorrow and justify spending all sorts of taxpayer money in the area where I live -- simply because this is a pretty nice area of the New York City region and most people living here pay in the highest state income tax brackets.
P.S. The "zero sum" argument may have been discredited, but it is often valid when applied to specific cases. A family that spends $250 on a night out at an NBA game is spending $250 that they would have had regardless of whether the NBA team was there or not.
That car rental tax is a creative way for a city to have a stadium financed by people who don't live in the city (and therefore don't vote for its elected leaders). As sh!tty as this seems, you gotta admire people for their ingenuity in these things. LOL.
Bravo. That team has no business going back to Washington DC, a market that has proven itself to be anemic twice in the past 35 years. The only reason MLB selected WDC is because Bud Selig is a guilty white male liberal who wanted to placate America's highest-minority-population city.
It would be a guaranteed financial failure. One month after the announcement that the team would be moving, only 10,000 season tickets were sold. 10,000! In any viable market the season tickets would have been sold out already -- 40,000 or more.
Give the team to the Virginia suburbs, with a new ballpark out near Dulles. That's where it should have gone in the first place.
I read earlier today that only 10,000 season tix were sold. Do you have better info? 10K at this stage is a clear sign that the team financial performance would be miserable.
I would, if it were to provide legal services to defend the city from the lawsuits it causes...and Congress was a cosigner. :)
Nope. The majority.
Owner: Washington-King County stadium authority.
Cost: $517.6 million (as of July 1999).
Public financing: $340 million from a one-half-cent prepared food tax in King County and rental-car tax.
Private financing: $75 million from Mariners owners. Cost overruns of over $100 million are still being settled.
That page is old data (2001), and I believe the over-run issue has been settled reasonably, since the Mariners have some of the best attendance figures in baseball. (35,000 per game is NORMAL).
But I don't have the details on the exact settlement. The reason it was drawn out is the City wanted additional features in the Park and street configuration after the contract was built. Perhaps someone from Seattle could help me out here.
Safeco Insurance paid $40 Million for nameing rights - but I don't know for how long.
As if paying off teams to go to your city and then tell you 5 years down the road you gotta pay them off again to stay is a good deal for taxpayers? Orlando had to deal with that after they gave the Magic a sweetheart deal, and the same thing happened with St. Pete's Devil Rays. No free stadium is ever free enough for these corporate hogs at the pork trough. Guess what happens if you go for ten years without a team? You spend money on other stuff that's more important than subsidizing already wealthy owners and spoiled players.
I can't understand how conservatives buy into this 'stadiums-for-the-public-good' crap. Bread and circuses.
LOL... They were lucky to get 10k at any game in Montreal.
The Cubs and Boston are the only places that sell huge amount (more than 50%) of season tickets, because their parks are so small. That sounds pretty good for a first year team in a market 30 miles from another team.
The city, County and State spent, I believe, $165,000,000 for "infrastructure improvements" (roads, bridges, highways, transit, etc.) to "enable" the private financing.
More important to who?
I can't understand how conservatives buy into this 'stadiums-for-the-public-good' crap. Bread and circuses.
Because life with the NFL,MLB,NHL and NBA is better than life without for a large segments of the population; the taxpaying part. If that isn't a public good, what is? It's not like publicly owned stadiums for sports teams is some kind of new concept. Many cities and states across the nation have rich histories and traditions tied to their professional teams, nearly all of which have played for their entire history in publicly financed stadiums and arenas.
If you don’t like sports, good for you. I don’t like hanging out in city parks. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exist. It's all about the most benefit to the most people. A large majority of the public enjoys pro sports to some degree, even if its once a year at their neighbor’s Super Bowl party. Stadiums that keep teams in the black and in town are indeed a public good. Very few people are affected if the local bolt factory leaves town. 75% of men and perhaps half of all women are very negatively affected if an NFL team moves away to some other city willing to pay the price.
As a lifelong Giants fan, reading that makes me proud. GO GIANTS!!
More important to EVERYONE--what you spend money on as a city comes out of my pocket and everyone else's.
Because life with the NFL,MLB,NHL and NBA is better than life without for a large segments of the population; the taxpaying part. If that isn't a public good, what is? It's not like publicly owned stadiums for sports teams is some kind of new concept. Many cities and states across the nation have rich histories and traditions tied to their professional teams, nearly all of which have played for their entire history in publicly financed stadiums and arenas.
Defining widely a public good results in public dollars being used for private moneymaking. These stadiums are rarely moneymakers for cities. Your arguments of 'rich traditions' and 'history' and how this is 'not a new concept' boil down to the fact that you want money taken from some people and given to others. You just happen to like it this time.
If you don’t like sports, good for you. I don’t like hanging out in city parks. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exist. It's all about the most benefit to the most people. A large majority of the public enjoys pro sports to some degree, even if its once a year at their neighbor’s Super Bowl party. Stadiums that keep teams in the black and in town are indeed a public good. Very few people are affected if the local bolt factory leaves town. 75% of men and perhaps half of all women are very negatively affected if an NFL team moves away to some other city willing to pay the price.
I do like sports. Nonetheless, I happen to think you're far overexaggerating to say 75% of men would be 'very negatively affected,' and even if they are, when is caring for the fragile psyche of the populace supposed to be the job of local government? I thought that people wanted water and power and sewer and cops and schools and fire protections and roads and parks. I don't remember anyone saying the standard function of cities is to make sure guys feel good on Saturday. If that's now a function of government, I'm gonna hit the Chicken Ranch and bill my hometown right now!
If your entire argument is 'I like sports, this is for something I like,' 'it's been done before, a lot,' and 'people like sports,' well, gosh, I guess we better do it. People in San Francisco like bathhouses. They've been there a long time. They've been built before. So have city pools. Gays think maybe they should build them on the public dollar. We'll just check it by your logic...and...yep, free bathhouses on the public dollar!
As usual, people trying to do 'good' refuse to recognize that when everyone gets everyone else to do 'good' with other people's money, pretty soon that billion dollar stadium and million-a-week in unemployment and billion-a-month in AFDC start adding up. "Oh, it's just a little bit. It'll pay for itself over time." Sure, but in the meantime, it comes out of everyone's pockets in the form of property, sales, gas, and whatever other taxes locals can dream up.
You should be ashamed for taking that money out of the hands of people that might really need it for THEMSELVES, just so you feel better about your chances of watching some ball. And it is so you FEEL better, because hey, the team could still just up and leave even if your city does pony up a bunch. It's happened in Baltimore. Happened in Cleveland. Happened in LA.
Great conservative thinking there, Roosevelt.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.