He writes . . .
It's gratifying to find that there are other Santa Clara residents who are seriously questioning the need, the use, and especially the real costs of a football stadium in our City. Thank you for creating your site.
I hope that this doesn't put me in too-small a minority, but I oppose any stadium even if the 49ers/NFL pay 100%, own the stadium and keep it up—the traffic congestion and the police overtime, the fire and paramedic on-call support are down to us as residents no matter who "operates" the stadium.
In essence, we're being "offered" ownership of a billion-dollar boondoggle as residents, but we're not going to be given much CONTROL.
By that I mean: The yet-unreleased details of who, exactly, will be seated on the so-called Santa Clara Stadium Authority. That body, I firmly believe, will be the vehicle by which the 49ers front office generally and the York Family in particular will control any decision-making on any finished stadium. Having learned from their dealings with San Francisco, I firmly believe that the team management is looking for a far more "unequal" partnership than the one they now have at Monster Park.
Anyway, please count me in as a supporter.
Sincerely,
Bill B.
Santa Clara
Bill raises some great points that we haven't even gotten to yet here at Stadium Facts, in particular the whole issue of the Stadium Authority. While the San Francisco 49ers claim that this would be a separate entity, formed by the city, but with firewalls in place to protect the city’s finances from risk, we have no details yet about how this would function in practice.
In fact, when one Councilmember asked the San Francisco 49ers about what would happen if the Stadium Authority did not generate enough revenue to cover expenses, the spokesman’s answer was simply that the Authority could “push back the cost on the tenants.”
Sounds like a good answer?
Well, maybe, until you consider that the stadium’s main (and perhaps only) tenant will be the San Francisco 49ers, who are asking, of course, for a long-term fixed lease of $5 million a year. [And just to be clear, that money would go to the Stadium Authority—not to the City of Santa Clara.] If you have a lease agreement, the landlord can’t just come back and raise the rent. That’s why you sign a contract.
There might be other tenants in the building, but they will probably have leases too, and from a simple economic standpoint, there is a limit to what the Stadium Authority can charge for rent. If the rent for stadium office or retail space jumps too sharply in response to Stadium Authority budget shortfalls, these other tenants will simply move.
Moreover, under the current plan, the team won’t even be covering its own game day costs. [As Bill notes, those policemen on overtime aren’t going to be volunteers.] The 49ers' budget estimates for the Stadium Authority are on page 14 of the San Francisco 49ers' plan, and you can see that the NFL Game Day Expenses alone are higher than the 49ers' expense reimbursements to the Stadium Authority.
As I’ve urged before, please read the San Francisco 49ers plan yourself. And while the Mayor may cut off your microphone if you talk a few seconds past the buzzer (while allowing non-resident pro-stadium speakers to continue well past their alloted time), please come to meetings and ask the City Council serious questions about this proposal.
It’s clear that they’ve had a largely pro-stadium audience at meetings until now, and they need to hear from the other side.
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