The Sonics — who used to be the Seattle Sonics until Seattle voters passed Initiative 91, “which prohibited the city from using tax dollars to subsidize a pro team unless the subsidy generates a certain profit for the city,” and are now searching for another city to house them — want to build a $530 million dollar arena…and they want taxpayers to pony up for $300 million of it.
The Sonics can kiss off, as far as I’m concerned.
I’ve always been flabbergasted at the amount of money poured into professional sports, and especially the amount of money thrown at professional athletes. It just makes my head hurt when those people in charge of such things then ask that the public — many of whom couldn’t give two figs for professional sports in general, let alone any particular team — essentially be required to pay to support them.
You want $300 million of my tax dollars? Put it towards education. Put it towards actually doing something to improve transit in Seattle, instead of half-assing your way through a series of stopgap measures, or instead of bickering about what to do for so long (or stubbornly insisting on ridiculous, expensive, impractical options, like the [thankfully, now dead] tunnel replacement for the Alaskan Way Viaduct) that nothing ever gets done. Put the money towards something — or anything — that would actually benefit everyone, not just those who get their rocks off by watching other people play a game.
What do you think about the argument of them bring more than that in tax revenues for the city?
Wow, you could be talking about my home: Auckland, New Zealand!
As part of this you may find the study I’ve linked to from this post interesting. It investigates the value of stadium and event subsidies.
http://rcd.typepad.com/personal/2006/11/debt_sinks_stad.html
If having a new arena is that important to professional sports and professional teams I say the 300 highest paid professional athletes should pitch in one million each and trust me, the top tier, the top 300, could do so without even noticing that it was missing from their bank accounts.
Michael Jordan 35 million
Shaquille O’Neal 32 million
Kevin Garnett 30 million
Kobe Bryant 26 million
Grant Hill 26 million
LeBron James 21 million
Vince Carter 20 Million
Allen Iverson 20 million
Tracy McGrady 19 million
Jason Kidd 16 million
And let me be clear here, Michael Jordan’s 35 million is what he gets from basketball, if you want to count endorsements you can easily double that number to 70 million.
Because all their going to get from me is $0.39 which happens to be the price the stamp for the letter in which I say HELL NO.
(Yes I know email is cheaper, I’ll be sending one of those too!)
wouldn’t it be nice if the legislature would make a budget request for 300 million to fund physical education programs for children and teenagers?
Of course, if the sonics up and leave Seattle the city will lose tax revenue and people who depend on the sonics for their livelihood will lose their jobs, and that is always a sad and difficult thing (that can’t be glossed over.) That being said, I find it difficult to believe that the city receives more than 300 million in tax revenue in a single year, or even over several years, from the sonics. Additionally, the costs of building a new stadium (like the increase of wear and tear on city streets) should be subtracted from any projected revenue in order to present an accurate depiction of the benefit of keeping the sonics. Plus, where do they propose to build this new stadium? Will old buildings be torn down to do it? Will the people currently working in those buildings lose their jobs as a result? How do they plan to re-route streets to accomodate the new stadium itself and the increased traffic in the area? Are there plans?
I can’t even begin to care about professional basketball or the comfort of the overpaid players, coaches, etc. But I do care about the impact these decisions have on the average people who live and work in Seattle.
Of course there’s revenue from the arena that it benefits, but they can just get a loan. It’s really that simple (IMHO). Actually, I do know it’s a lot more complicated than that and there is revenue but how is that helping the rest of the community (the ones that paid for it).
$300,000,000 I think that’s about 10 years of my school district’s underfunded budget. Even 3 million a year more would make such a difference for the kids…
On another note: $300,000,000 that’s 3,000 $100,000 scholarships for college. Imagine how that might help the community…