All of these really financially challenged people are speaking right now about how the new stadium is the best thing that could happen since sliced bread or rice and beans.It makes me sick to hear them because they don't realize it is coming out of the meager money in their pockets, could they be that stupid? They are saying they want a stadium so their children and grandchildren can watch baseball. The people talking don't have the money for the tickets, who are they kidding? And, who goes to baseball games anyway? I will tell you: People from Broward. The Marlin's must have dredged up these booster people, promising them a perk.
Chair Bruno Barreiro and most of the rest of them: This stadium will be an economic engine. We all know the Orange Bowl wasn't. What has changed? I say: In your dreams - it is an economic engine for the team and raiding funds earmarked for the poor.
It is almost 8 P.M. now and the Commission still hasn't voted. This is excruciating. They are trying to get union stuff and small business concessions in the contract. They focus on minutia.
14 comments:
While I am no fan of the Marlins organization of the ridiculous amount of money local taxpayers are shelling out for the stadium, it is worth mentioning that baseball is 80 something home games a year vs. less than a dozen for a football team. It would have the potential (if anyone goes to the games, that is) to drive more business to the neighborhood than it did as a football stadium.
Thanks for your post. My own city, Chicago, is being financially destroyed by a monument-building mayor who is diverting billions of tax dollars to his vanity projects, and to TIF developers, at the expense of our essential road and sewer infrastructure, our schools, our public transit, our health clinics, and our civic amenities that are available free or at nominal cost to everyone, such as our parks, beaches, and museums.
Sports team owners are usually among the wealthiest people in the country. Since when did Georgia Frontiere, a prodigiously wealthy woman, rate a gift worth hundreds of millions of dollars from crime-plagued St. Louis, that is so cash-strapped it doesn't even have a decent fire rating?
Why do we in Chicago who can't afford a Bears or White Sox ticket have to pay taxes for a new stadium, or to put a massive toilet bowl on top of Soldier's Field.
This country is being BANKRUPTED by Corporate Welfare, and the cities that are having the most financial problems are, sadly, the ones that most eagerly bite the bait of "economic development" by every Corporate Welfare client.
Look around you at all the failing regional shopping malls within three miles of each other that litter the landscape from coast to coast- your taxes financed them, and for what? So the developer can walk away within 3 years, after soaking your community for tens of millions of dollars.
Unfortunately, most politicians are are economically illiterate and will always take the bait of "economic development", and are lay-downs for developers who tell them, well, if YOU don't float us, we'll find another desperate, failing, cash-strapped community that will.
Thus, we have a nationwide race to the bottom among our local leaders, to see what bunch of pushovers can bankrupt their community the fastest and the most deeply with the most outrageously unnecessary and expensive publicly financed development money sinks.
Souto is actually making sense. Yes, he talked about Cuba for awhile, as always. But now he is calling for a public referendum for the baseball stadium....calling the lack of vote a travesty. He must be having a good mental day...
Barbara Jordan is talking about Peewee Reese and nostalia...and let's make sure the police and firefighters get after hour jobs out of this. Apparently that is a common thread with all of them.
It astonishes me how many working-class and middle-class citizens do not recognize that the costs of these billion-dollar gifts to sports team owners come right out of their own pockets, and to the loss of necessary civic services and amenities.
The citizens will never fail to applaud a sports stadium. "It brings money in", they say. To whom, they don't ask.
We wouldn't be the first society that collapsed itself completely by overindulging in vanity spending and monument building, with the applause of the moronic population.
Good luck to you all in Miami. I love your city.Please campaign to defeat the stadium and be an example to the rest of the country. Somebody in some city has to start to turn the ship, and I can tell it isn't going to be my city.
We do not need a stadium!!! I want my tax money to go where it's needed!!
Yes, and we need a two sports arenas (within 2 blocks of each other) and 2 performing arts buildings too. How about 2 stadiums?
we have 3 performing arts centers... Don't forget cutler Bays gift from the county
Who is the woman without a body behind Bruno?
Gimenez had the best comments of the night by far. He is the best commissioner we have.
Jordan in her usual style of "what about us" wants baseball to invest in the inner city. Let's think about that, swap guns for bats, she might be on to something.
Why is Burgess so very rude to Gimenez? Because he asks the right questions?
Burgess is a turd. He is the City Manager who had no clue hundreds of his employees were stealing money meant for affordable housing. If Burgess had not read the House of Lies piece in the Herald money would still be being funneled to Burgess's cronies.
And it was laugable Burgess could not even answer Commissioner Gimenez's most basic questions regarding the $650 mil giveaway. Burgess needs a written script to say "Good Morning".
Bruno the Dim...
Burgess the corrupt.
Marlins and their lobbyists are the foxes in the henhouse.
I mostly agree with you, BUT!
Broward accounted for something like 30% of attendants. Miami-Dade was over 50%. If this really gets built, if anything more Dade fans will most likely go.
By the way Palm Beach accounted for the rest of the attendants.
This is a misconception said too much, Broward has more disposable money percentage wise but Dade has more in raw number. Dade fans account for more season ticket holders as well. The same is said about the Dophins when in fact both counties are virtually 50-50.
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