Sunday Night at the Movies

There was a spirited crowd at Peterson Middle School on Wednesday night, eager to learn more about the most important City-wide initiative of the century -- Measure J, the Stadium Subsidy.

And, learn they did. Kolstad & Kennedy covered topics as varied as the technical minutia of redevelopment law, school financing, game-day public safety measures and the stadium's potential impact on our perilously overdrawn City budget.

They even discussed campaign finance reform:



While we were not able to capture every moment of the evening's proceedings, we have posted as much as we could on youtube, where you will find discussions on:

• Stadium jobs
• Traffic
• School funding
• Taxes
  
• Economy & economic stimulus
  
• Public safety
• Stadium financing
  

Sit back, grab a bag of popcorn & let the good times roll!

"Net Present Value" vs. "Actual Dollars"

Mayor Mahan & Councilmember Matthews have revolutionized the housing market with their discovery that "net present value figures ... are based on outdated economic assumptions" and that we should focus on "actual dollars" paid over 40 years!

Madam Mayor, I'll buy your home for $1 million -- a good $100,000 over the current market price. I'll pay you in 2050. Do we have a deal? Can you vacate by next Tuesday?

Fair Market Rent for the proposed stadium site is currently over $1.8 million per year. Even with the new Mahan-Matthews Math, that should be worth over $72 million in "actual dollars." Too bad the 49ers LLC only signed up for $40 million.

This is a bad deal -- with or without the lies the Mayor is spreading.

Just barely above junk bonds

The 49ers would like Santa Clara taxpayers to believe that building, owning and operating this stadium will be a fabulous investment of our money. Better than buying Google stock at $100, or Sunpower at $25.

Some members of City Council are all but ready to put on Gold Rush outfits to repeat that chant.

But if it's such a screaming good deal, why haven't the 49ers themselves scooped it up yet? Or the city of San Francisco, which has been looking this over even longer than we have?

Well, one source for impartial opinions turns out to be the bankers, because to build a 68,000 seat stadium, the city will have to borrow a lot of money. The bankers are the ones who will have to take a hard look at the deal and decide how risky it is. The bankers have no personal attachments to this, only their money. And money itself is neutral.

At the November 20 City Council meeting, David Brodsly, the city's own bond consultant struggled to spit out the cold hard facts: the Stadium Authority bonds will be BBB-rated -- just one step above junk bonds!

Besides the bruised egos ("They think our pride and joy is junk!") there is also the practical matter of bond interests. Safe loans have lower interest rates. Risky loans have higher interest rates (think pay-day loan.) Higher interest rates drive up the total cost of borrowing of money. Ultimately this will make it harder for the stadium to break even.

Nobody on City Council batted an eyelash at this. Here we are, mortgaging our future for this white elephant, but nobody even registered a reaction when a disinterested bystander calls it a turkey.

Here's a video clip of the remarks, with a transcript:



Santa Clara resident Don Buchanan: "What kind of a rating do you think this bond will receive?"

David Brodsly, Managing Director, KNN Public Finance (the city's bond consultant): "The two bond issues that are ... umm ... being contemplated by the Stadium Authority ... they would be the [inaudible] ... the ... the admissions bond would probably be in the BBB level which is the bottom of the investment grade range, that's ... it's ... that ... it's the less certain area of the market, but that's ... that's a good guess standing here today."

White elephant

white elephant, n. 1. an Indian elephant of a pale color that is sometimes venerated in India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and [Burma]; 2a. a property requiring much care and expense and yielding little profit; 2b. an object no longer of value to its owner but of value to others; 2c. something of little or no value. Merriam-Webster Online.

White elephants are rare albinos that are highly prized by the kings of Thailand, Burma and other Asian countries. Thanks to their special status, they don't have to work as beasts of burden, like their normally pigmented cousins. However, just like regular elephants, they are large animals with large appetites. Therefore giving someone a white elephant is considered both a gift and a curse.

According to Mahidol University (Thailand,) because of ...

... the inordinate cost of maintaining a white elephant ... [such a] gift could easily induce bankruptcy if not also accompanied by a grant of land. So singular an honor as a white elephant could obviously not be refused, but without land it was subtly barbed -- an indirect criticism which apparently cooled the heels of excessively ambitious minions.

So instead of "Oh boy, we are going to own a billion-dollar stadium, and it will only cost us a couple of hundred millions," maybe we should be asking "Why do we have to pay $222,000,000 to scoop up elephant droppings?"

The cold, cruel truth

These words of wisdom are from Ray Ratto's recent article on the A's stadium — Time to call A's owner for crying wolf on stadium — but the analysis holds just as true for the current San Francisco 49ers' request for a massive public subsidy from the City of Santa Clara . . .

the cold, cruel truth, proven again and again by economists everywhere, is that stadiums have not paid off for anyone except for the team owners.

Going turbothermic...

In 1911, Ambrose Bierce, a San Franciscan journalist, wrote the Devil's Dictionary, a satirical book that lampooned political double-talk. It is fitting that we pay homage to Bierce today, when San Francisco and double-talk are very much in the news.

An updated edition of Devil's Dictionary might have an entry like this:

turbo·thermic, adj. From turbo- (to blow) and -thermic (of or related to heat.)
1. Blowing hot air.
2. Characterized by huffing and puffing, e.g. subsidy supporters trying to blow down Santa Clarans' house of fiscal responsibility.

Have you ever wondered where subsidy opponents get our numbers? The short answer is, they all come directly from reports produced by the city's consultants, or by city staff.

For a slightly longer answer, let's look at the three myths listed in the "Myth Busters" flyer. This flyer was handed out at the Art & Wine Festival by the Santa Clara Plays Fair coalition, of which StadiumFacts is a member.

---

Myth: the stadium project would create thousands of jobs.

Fact: the number of jobs is just over 500. Note the fine print: "FTE = Full Time Equivalent. Per CS&L." Because of the highly seasonal nature of the jobs, many of them will be part-time. Their sum total is equivalent to 515 full time jobs.

Source: report from Keyser Marston Associates (KMA, consultants hired by the city) dated June 1, 2007, page 8.

(Click on this small image for a larger version.)

By the way, KMA is in agreement with CS&L on this. CS&L are the consultants hired by the 49ers themselves. CS&L's job is to make the deal look as good as possible. If all they can come up with is 515, then anybody who tells you "thousands of jobs" is just going turbothermic, i.e. blowing hot air.

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Myth: the stadium project would make a lot of money for the city.

Fact: the stadium would generate $650,000 of general fund revenue per year, from a city contribution of $222,000,000.

Source: KMA report dated June 1, 2007, page 8, and Implementation Plan and Timeline for the "City of Santa Clara Principles and Priorities for 2007-09," dated July 12, 2007, page 15.

(Click on these small images for larger versions.)

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Myth: the stadium project will generate a lot of economic activity.

Fact: an office building would generate over 4 times the economic activity, while requiring no subsidy. Besides, if the city is going to "invest" $222,000,000 (assuming a subsidy can ever be called an "investment,") then the return-on-investment is the only bottom line that matters to the city. Keep in mind that the $650,000 annual return to the city discussed above already includes taxes on the $85 million in economic activity. How much revenue other private businesses might gain, or how much salary are being paid to football players, are secondary factors.

Source: KMA report dated June 1, 2007, addendum.

(Click on this small image for a larger version.)

Furthermore, subsidy supporters who cite the $85M as a benefit are being disingenuous because

1. they neglect to mention the comparison to an office building,
2. only $41M of the $85M is actually new benefits; the rest comes from the existing 49ers training center -- the colloquial term for this is "double-dipping." Here is the KMA report again, page 2:

(Click on this small image for a larger version.)

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Notes:

1. The KMA report can be downloaded from here.
2. The Implementation Plan and Timeline for the "City of Santa Clara Principles & Priorities for 2007-09" can be downloaded from here -- click on REPORT under item 5F.

---

Last week, prominent subsidy supporter and former Councilmember Lisa Gillmor used the term "fuzzy math" to attack KMA's (and CS&L's!) numbers.

This is a curious phrase to use in this context, considering its history.

In the first presidential debate of 2000, George W. Bush repeatedly used the phrase "fuzzy math" to attack statements made by Al Gore, and to defend his own tax cuts for the rich. According to a CNN poll taken immediately after the debate, most people thought Gore won the debate, 48% vs. 41%.

Why are subsidy supporters jumping on this losing bandwagon?

Truthiness Illustrated

Mark Purdy posted the full transcript of his interview with Jed York yesterday. It makes for very interesting reading.

There is one point in particular that caught my eye. Near the end of the interview, Mr. York made the following comment:

"... with the city's investment of $160 million, not only are they seeing revenue that's occurring from a 49ers game, they're also seeing direct revenue from the ancillary events, the 14 to 20 major events that can happen here. So the city of Santa Clara can see anywhere from $2 million to $10 million a year in net income going to their general fund because of the stadium being here."

Assume for the moment that his figures are correct. Is this a "good investment"?

• $2 million per year over the 30 year life of the stadium would not even repay $160 million.
• $10 million per year is equivalent to the 49ers Corp. making payments on a 30 year mortgage at 4.75%.
  

The really sad news is that the city's consultants and the 49ers' own consultants have yet to show the public how the general fund could net anywhere near $2 million per year. The Keyser Marsten report shows $700,000 per year. (Referenced below.)

Moreover, the initial subsidy from the city is $222 million -- $160 million cash plus $62 million for a new garage and moving the power substation. (Referenced below.)

As an MBA with experience in the finance industry, Mr. York surely realizes what a bad investment this would be.



References:
See the last page of the Keyser Marsten report at the following location:
http://ci.santa-clara.ca.us/pdf/collateral/49ers-20070605-Agenda-Report-Eval-49ers-Economic-and-Fiscal-Benefits-Study.pdf

For reference, see page 15 of the report under agenda item 5F on the July 17th meeting summary at:
http://cityclerkdatabase.ci.santa-clara.ca.us/wx/pubhtml/pubhtml/3010.html#July-17-07Regular

Cities and the stadium business

At his blog Field of Schemes, Neil deMause, co-author of the book Field of Schemes, recently summarized an excellent special report from the Baltimore Sun of the pitfalls of stadium ownership for cities. As he writes in his post Aberdeen: How not to build a stadium deal,

It's an outstanding reminder that when it comes to stadium finance, it's increasingly less about who pays the initial bills than about who reaps the revenues down the road.

The experience of Aberdeen is a cautionary tale for any city considering the possibility of operating a professional sports stadium. As Aberdeen's current mayor said in 2005,

Municipalities, especially this one, shouldn't be in this type of business.

The San Francisco 49ers have requested not just $287,000,000 in public assets for the construction of the stadium. They have also requested that the City of Santa Clara create a Sports Authority, which would both assume an additional $330,464,000 in bond debt and operate the stadium.

And taking on debt and operating the stadium are two additional risks, as the experience of Aberdeen demonstrates.

I hope you'll read the full article at the Baltimore Sun website, but here are a few interesting highlights:

Every game has been a sellout since the 6,000-seat stadium opened in 2002. Companies such as Bank of America have paid to be sponsors. . . .

But even on days like this, when the city-owned stadium is packed, Aberdeen loses money.

This is an important cautionary note — a full stadium does not equal profit for the city.

The Harford County community owes $6.7 million in stadium-related debt, and millions in interest, on a payment schedule stretching to 2022. The city's stadium fund has posted operating losses that total more than $1 million since 2001, forcing Aberdeen to dip into its treasury.

And these debts and operating losses are for a small, minor league stadium. The debt and potential for operating losses will be much bigger for an NFL stadium.

In closed-door negotiations, Aberdeen signed over to the Ripken businesses most of the money to be made from the baseball games. City officials had intended to cover the bills in other ways, including fees, taxes and a deal with Nottingham Properties to develop adjacent land. But the city's contract with Nottingham contained no penalty for delay. The land remains mostly acres of dirt.

Under the current proposal from the San Francisco 49ers, the breakdown of revenue streams is the same, with the notable exception of stadium naming rights, personal seat licenses, concessionaire rights, etc. But these revenue streams are NOT profit for the Stadium Authority — the 49ers' proposal calls for the Stadium Authority to borrow against this expected revenue in order to build the stadium. Like the Aberdeen IronBirds, the San Francisco 49ers will make most of the money from the actual football games.

The city, with a general fund budget at the time of just $7.6 million, pledged $4 million.

Most minor-league stadiums are owned by larger jurisdictions that can spread the costs over bigger budgets - the situation in Prince George's County, where the minor-league stadium is overseen by a multi-jurisdictional authority.

What's particularly interesting to me about these numbers is that even in the case of a minor league baseball team, cities look to spread the cost over a larger region. And Aberdeen pledged a little over half of its annual general fund budget to the project. The current San Francisco 49ers' proposal calls for Santa Clara to take on FOUR AND A HALF TIMES its annual general fund budget for a stadium. The scale of the subsidy request is simply shocking.

The city was counting on a ticket tax and the potential for parking fees, advertising on a billboard and non-baseball events. The tax raised about $140,000 the first season, but the city had little success attracting concerts, banquets or similar functions. In 2002, those events brought in only $2,000.

The trickle-down profit scenario outlined in the 49ers' proposal depends on not simply attracting other events, but making a profit from these events. If there is no profit from outside events, no money will be set aside for capital improvements, and I'm sure we can all guess who will be on the hook for those expenses.

"The Ripken family has put Aberdeen on the map," said [Former Mayor Douglas S.] Wilson, after rattling off the names of major leaguers such as Orioles right fielder Nick Markakis who have passed through Aberdeen. "To create that in a small government, to be able to have a minor-league baseball team, I mean, it's pretty phenomenal."

We've seen the same sort of thinking here in Santa Clara. Instead of addressing the very real financial costs and potential risks, stadium supporters draw on such far-fetched comparisons as the Wright brothers and the moon landing.

Instead of such wishful thinking, we need to focus on the very real financial risks involved in the stadium business.

After all, if there was money to be made in operating a stadium, don't you think the 49ers would want to do that themselves?

Who really profits?

The San Francisco 49ers have been more than willing to talk about the potential economic benefits a stadium might have for Santa Clara and the surrounding region.

They haven't been quite so open about how they will benefit economically from that same new stadium.

Why not?

Well, it's probably because the value of their team will increase substantially if they get a new stadium — an immediate increase in value of somewhere between $250,000,000 and $700,000,000.

That's a much bigger increase than your average bathroom remodel.

How does the team's value increase?

Each year, Forbes magazine assesses the value of all 32 NFL teams. In their most recent list, the San Francisco 49ers are valued at $734 million — near the bottom of the pack (29th place.)

As Forbes states, this valuation is a reflection of the fact that "the 49ers have some of the lowest revenues in the league thanks to an antiquated stadium that features no club seating, and an onerous lease that forces the team to share concession, luxury-suite, naming-rights and signage revenue with the city."

A new stadium with a better revenue stream would increase the team's value. Could the new value go as high as $1.423 BILLION — Forbes' valuation of the Washington Redskins (and the team currently at the top of the list)? Maybe not. But it is certain that a new stadium with more favorable revenue stream would markedly increase the team's value.

Mike Swift at the San Jose Mercury News analyzed this very issue back in November 2006, shortly after the Santa Clara proposal was announced.

As he wrote in his article "Deluxe Stadium May Enrich 49ers"

. . . in many markets, a new stadium has produced a windfall for owners.

Patriots owner Robert Kraft paid $172 million for the team in 1994. Today, with the Patriots playing in a new suburban Boston stadium partly financed by the NFL, in a market with wealthy demographics like the Bay Area's, the franchise is valued by Forbes magazine at $1.2 billion. That is the second-highest among the four major sports (football, basketball, baseball and hockey), more valuable than even the storied New York Yankees.

By the way, it's worth noting that the new Patriots stadium (in Foxboro, MA, a town of about 16,000) was paid for ENTIRELY by the team's owner, Robert Kraft. [State taxpayers did finance about $75 million in infrastructure improvements, but the team is responsible for paying back that debt.]

As reporter David Copeland noted in his article "Patriots teach lesson about stadium financing",

By conventional "wisdom" for financing sports stadiums, Kraft should be crying poor. That conventional wisdom says that teams -- no matter what the sport -- can't possibly pay for a new stadium on their own and remain competitive.

The Patriots finished the regular season with an NFL-best 14-2 record. On top of that, Forbes magazine valued the team at $756 million [in 2003] -- in large part because of the new stadium -- up considerably from the $158 million Kraft paid for the Patriots in 1994.

We need to remember that professional sports are a big business, just like any other business, and the example of the New England Patriots is clear evidence that teams don't need public money to succeed.

Doing City Council's homework

Since City Council is not doing much comparison shopping, everyone should help them out by examining other alternatives.

On June 1, Stadium Facts highlighted a successful development that was built entirely with private financing, Santana Row.

On June 5, the KMA report pointed out that a hypothetical Class A office project can generate up to 5 times the fiscal benefits, with zero public subsidy.

Here's another possibility.

Have you ever wondered where all the 1's and 0's of the Internet hang out? Those YouTube videos, the latest movie trailers, the satellite maps at Google Earth, your vacation pictures on Flickr -- they all add up to a lot more 1's and 0's than simple emails. All this data is driving up the need for more and more data centers to store the bits and bytes, and to handle the traffic when grandma wants to see the one that got away in Idaho.

According to the SJ Mercury News, data centers are

... a lucrative place to be. While prime office space in downtown San Jose costs about $2 a square foot per month, David Dunn, senior vice president of Los Angeles-based CRG West, said space in a data center rents from $15 to $30 a square foot per month. Even at that price, it took just nine months last year for CRG to fully lease its newly opened 16th-floor data center at Market Post Tower in downtown San Jose.

And the forecast is for more of the same:

"Do we think this is a gamble? Absolutely not. The forecast for the next 24 months shows demand is rising," [CRG vice president Jameson] Agraz said. "Every TV show you watch will be stored on hard drives so you can have video on demand."

Of course, your mileage may vary. But the point is, there is more than one way to invest $297 million. We would be fools if we didn't check out at least some of them.

Comparison shopping

Smart consumers look around before they buy things. The bigger the purchase, the more research. For a 10-year-old Toyota to get Junior back and forth to school, you might spend an hour reading Edmunds or Kelly Blue Book, and maybe run a Carfax report. For something more substantial like a house, you might spend a few days on Multiple Listings and Google maps to get the lay of the land, then make your realtor search for comparable sales.

So guess how much comparison shopping was done by Santa Clara City Council for an $854 million football stadium?

Here's a hint... The City's own consultants threw in an oh-by-the-way at the end of their report. They pointed out that a hypothetical office building would generate 5 times the fiscal benefits, while requiring no subsidy from the taxpayers. Immediately all guns came out a-blazin' as if Wyatt Earp himself just popped in at the O.K. Corral!

"Look at all the empty buildings sitting around," the stadium supporters say. "Riding the elevator up and down doesn't count (as entertainment)," they say.

Hey, calm down, gents! Nobody said for sure we're going to build the next Sun campus. Folks are just trying to point out that a big bunch of buckeroonies is about to be spent on another Candlestick, and we as a city have not really looked around to see if there might be better options.

The Vietnamese have a saying, "Có tật, giật mình."

"The guilty are jumpy."

The Beijing Olympics can't come around soon enough. Some sport fans from around here might really clean up on the high jump.

Return on Investment

The 49ers have described this stadium as a partnership where the City joins them in an investment. Now that the proposal has been taken apart by the City's own consultants, let's look at the investment at a back-of-the-napkin level. After all, many Silicon Valley start-ups began similarly in-depth.

The City is being asked to put in $160M of cash, $60M worth of land, $47M to build a parking garage, and $20M to $30M to move a power substation that's in the way. That's $297 million of capital that we are going to tie up.

So what kind of return are we getting out of this investment? How does $650K a year sound? (KMA report, page 3, 2nd paragraph.) That's 0.2% return on investment!

Compare this to some other investments:

12-month CD	5.05%
Mutual fund, indexed to S&P 500, 5 year average	8.23%
San Jose real estate (median home price, 2000-2005 average)	12.6%

Councilmember Kevin Moore says the stadium sounds like "an absolute winner." Maybe. On the Planet Mongo. Not here.

Link of the Day

You may have noticed the rather long list of links on the right hand side of the site. Most of these links are to studies and reports on the costs and benefits of public subsidies for professional sports stadiums. It's a long list, though, and you might be wondering where to start.

Today I'd like to highlight one of those articles: Finding the Bottom Line for Sports: Observations from an Academic by Brad Humphreys. Humphreys has a Ph.D. in Economics, and he is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

This article is particularly relevant in light of next Tuesday's City Council meeting because Humphreys analyzes the differences between "economic impact studies," which are typically prepared by sports teams, and academic research, which centers on analyzing the costs and benefits of subsidies.

The staff analysis of the San Francisco 49ers' economic impact report will be one of the subjects at the next City Council meeting, and the issues Humphreys highlights should form an important part of that analysis.

While Humphreys acknowledges that the presence of a professional sports can offer some non-economic benefits "like civic pride and world-class city status for their host communities," he concludes that "these benefits don't seem to justify the public spending needed to build a 21st century stadium."

In fact, he states that

My own research, published in peer-reviewed academic journals, and based on past economic performance of all U.S. cities with a professional football, basketball or baseball franchise since 1969, concludes that professional sports teams and facilities increased employment and earnings in only one small sector of the economy -- the recreation and amusement industry. It actually reduced earnings and employment in related industries like hotels, bars and restaurants.

Overall, professional sports reduced real per-capita income in their metropolitan areas by about $40 per year.

If that information is true, you may wonder, then where does the economic impact report get its numbers?

Humphreys addresses this question in the article. He finds sports teams and supporters use economic impact studies, which are forecasts. He writes,

They use relatively simple methods to quantify complex economic events. There is no widely accepted standard methodology for generating these forecasts, so the authors face many choices in how to run these studies, ultimately affecting the size of expected benefits.

Academic research and analysis, on the other hand, . . .

. . . goes through the peer review process, and papers with important flaws in methodology, data or technique are typically not published. But peer-reviewed academic papers are not accessible to non-specialists, so reporters rarely see them. Researchers care about both the conclusions and how those conclusions were reached, so academic papers contain mathematical equations, long detailed methodological discussions, footnotes and citations.

Humphreys also identifies three important differences between economic impact studies and academic analysis.

First is the question of gross spending vs. net spending.

He acknowledges that people spend a lot of money at games and events, but he cautions that "all this spending is not new spending." Most people have a limited budget, and if they spend more on attending events, they will have less to spend for other purposes.

Second is the issue of "Concentrated Benefits, Diffuse Costs."

In a nutshell, economic impact studies focus on the economic activity generated at the stadium, but they ignore the more diffuse decline in activity in other areas of the city. In the case of Santa Clara, such costs are things like fewer patrons at the AMC Mercado on event days.

The third issue is forecast uncertainty.

Economic forecasts, like weather forecasts, are projections. Hopefully, they are good projections based on solid information, but because they are projections, they carry a degree of uncertainity. A good forecast will identify "that degree of uncertainty in an understandable way. Forecasts are not very useful without that estimate of uncertainty, and an omission of that suggests a false degree of accuracy."

The San Francisco 49ers' economic impact report does NOT identify the degree of uncertainty. In fact, it states that . . .

The report has been prepared to assist the 49ers in the assessment of the economic impacts and community benefits associated with the franchise and the proposed new Santa Clara stadium and should not be relied upon for any other purpose, or by any other person or entity.

And that may be the most telling statement in the whole report.

Better cross your legs...

Would you spend almost 3000 buckaroonies to remodel a bathroom that you can only use once every 10 days? And if you tried to use it more often, the toilet would back up?

I didn't think so.

Yet that's exactly what the proposed 49ers stadium would be like. It would cost close to $3000 for every man, woman, and child in Santa Clara. By the most optimistic estimates (the 49ers' of course) the stadium would see action about 30 days a year (10 home games, plus 20 "special events.")

"A couple more days if we make the playoffs," says Lisa Lang, the 49ers' VP of communications.

So the only way to make this investment pay off is to increase the number of events. But wait! If you think the neighbors are up in arms about traffic etc now, wait until we try to put on even more events! There goes that overflowing toilet...

So to recap, 30 days out of 365 days a year, that's not even 10% utilization, folks!

Compare this to other investments we can make:

• A school would resound with the pitty-patter of little feet at least 9 months out of the year, or about 53% utilization. (We don't count weekends, 'cause the little tykes ought to have time off for Little League, etc.)
• A typical Silicon Valley office building would be in use 5-6 days a week (7 if it's Yahoo's -- they gotta catch up to Google.) Minus a couple of weeks off for Diwali and Chinese New Year, etc, that's still easily 65% utilization.
• A library like the cool new one on Homestead can be open 7 days a week -- if the city hasn't already blown its wad subsidizing billionaires.

What does that utilization look like?

Stadium: 10%	School: 53%
Office: 65%	Library: 100%

The moral of the story? If we're going to invest in something big, let's invest in something that will get a lot of use.

PS. Also, don't forget, that's $2900 per head, so for the average Santa Clara household with 2.58 :-) persons, that's just about $7500. That ought to pay for marble vanities and a heated toilet seat.