Smelling the sweet deals that the city is tripping over itself to serve the Yorks of Ohio, their neighbor is banging on the doors for a piece of the Corporate Subsidy Pie. That neighbor is Ohio-based Cedar Fair, the owner/operator of the Great America Theme Park, which voiced opposition to the proposed 49ers stadium on Friday.
Trouble is, these big boys want a big pie, and City Council intends to max out our credit cards to bake that pie.
"City officials are increasingly optimistic" and feel that a $160M hand-out is "do-able" by "leveraging city-owned lands for private development and issuing redevelopment bonds." They seem to have forgotten that "issuing bonds" is just a fancy way to say "borrowing money" and that Santa Clara taxpayers will end up holding the bag.
How big a bag? Well, there's the $160M subsidy for the stadium, $47M for the parking garage, another $20M or so to move the power station. Then there's whatever reimbursement Cedar Fair extorts -- ahem -- receives for construction traffic, dust, pain and suffering... So, once all diners are served, we'll be making payments on a mortgage far north of $225M.
A loan that big requires monthly payments of over $1,000,000 1 per month! That means we'll need to find another $12 million a year of new money to serve up that Subsidy Pie to our rich friends in Ohio.
What's next? A subsidy for the Greater Ohio Casino District?
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1 Payments for a $225M loan at 5% over 30 year are more than $1.2M per month. Even for $160M, we'll be out $859,000 per month.
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3 comments:
The positive spin of Cedar Fair's possible stumbling bloc on the 49er stadium issue shows just how poorly the City Council has performed, by ASSUMING far too much in their naive excitement.
This Sunday’s (6/17/07) Mercury News has another article, in their Bay Area Briefing Section, concerning the Council's documentation secrecy. The article underlines the obvious realization that only two Council members remain who haven't sold out to the York’s proposal.
As more public awareness is created, hopefully all the hoopla for the stadium proposal will finally dissipate.
Fortunately, Santa Clara residents can thank the Mercury News Staff for superb reporting, since the Santa Clara Weekly has become a joke, another toady spokesman for the Yorks.
It is becoming obvious Santa Clara residents MUST demand either a public vote on the stadium issue or initiate recalls !
I agree that Santa Clara residents need to stand up and demand a vote! We also need to start a recall since most of the city officials are not doing the will of the people, but have their own political agenda in mind.
The article about City Council's secrecy, mentioned by Buchanan, can be found here.
According to the Merc,
"Noticeably absent were e-mails from five of the city's seven council members: Dominic Caserta, Pat Kolstad, Joe Kornder, Mayor Patricia Mahan and Kevin Moore. Only Jamie McLeod and Vice Mayor Will Kennedy - the most vocal skeptics - submitted documents."
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