In my public policy class we are doing a project on Sport stadiums and how they are being built by tax money. I just wanted to throw out a few numbers.
These are all from the book “A Field of Schemes” by Joanna Cagan and Neil DeMause
The construction of a new stadium can cost close to a billon dollars, most of this coming out of taxpayers pockets. The money is usually taken out of things that needed funding, for example when the Baltimore built it’s new stadium, they had a failing public school system and one of the highest homeless rates in the country. Yet they rerouted tax money into building a $400 million dollar stadium.
The Idea that they try and sell you on is that the city will be making money off the revenue from these stadiums, yet the deals they make with sports franchise includes having the team play rent free, and the team usually get 75% of ticket prices and franchise rights.
When companies are given tax abatments in return for the new jobs they will bring to that city, the cost per job can run as high as $250,000 per job and considering that most of these jobs are low-wage job, it will be years before the city can see a return on the money they spent on aquiring these jobs.
I’m also attaching a couple of links from newspaper articles that I’ve found interesting (for some reason I can’t embed the link)
http://www.american.com/archive/2008/april-04-08/a-closer-look-at-stadium-subsidies
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results.html?artId=9474
http://www.heartland.org/publications/budget%20tax/article.html?articleid=23875
Tax payers money should be spent on something more productive, for example to help out the pulic schools in terms of financing and try to decrease homelessness, reduce crimes,etc… yes a new stadium will attract tourists and sports fanatic alike, it will bring jobs(however menial they are), but the money should not be wasted on recreation, it should be put to good use to improve communities and the state as a whole.
Roshni^^^
It would be too easy for the taxpayers money be put to more productive things; as much as we would like to think that the money we pay in taxes are there in the event we ever need to use it, it’s really not. It’s there for stupid and meaningless projects. The same people that are making the decision on how tax dollars should be spent are not worried about the homeless, the crime rates, or the public school because they are not living in neighborhoods that are effected by these things; they stand to gain millions by these projects so why should they care. The bottom line is, money talks. What they should have done is let the players and coaches that make all those millions build there own darn stadiums. I don’t see the purpose of paying a bunch of men millions of dollars just for hitting a ball and running around in a circle–just pointless if you ask me.
This issue about the stadium shows that people just want to make money. At the same time it allows them to justify the build as making money in the long run as well as adding jobs. I believe that the homeless and crime rates are at a low rate as of right now but the public schools are in need of money.
I really thought this whole scheme of building a stadium benefits the tax payers because it brings in business and makes the property around it more valuable!
GUESS NOT!
I believe that taxpayers money should be spend on something useful, such as building hospitals or schools. At the same time if we look at the opposite side, the stadium will bring money and that’s why stadium was build in the first place.