Cities should never be giving professional sports teams tax dollars to build stadiums. It is an unfair allocation of taxes from one group of citizens to another. There is little proof that these stadiums bring in any gain for the dollars spent. Not only that, there is little proof that sports team owners wouldn't keep their old stadiums or build their own if they want them. If no city or state were giving these subsidies the whole process would come to a screeching halt, and billions would be saved.
Does anyone think that all of a sudden the NFL and MLB and the NBA will simply wither and die without new stadiums and arenas? No other business has any think like the sort of public tax dollar support like sports teams. It would be one thing in the team was city owned, like in Green Bay Wisconsin. But that's the only example of a munincipal ownership. The larger the city the hard it would be to justify public ownership - because there would be no way to justfiy spending everyone's tax dollars for the entertainment of a few.
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The same is true for symphony halls, and museums and the like -- the idea is somehow that people who don't use these things should pay for them anyway out of some self-perceived public good that the politicans want to impose on the citizens. If government financing is used then there should be a check off box on a tax form: "Do you want a few dollars of your taxes to go symphony hall?" To argue that the people who don't use those facilities are somehow better off living in a city with these features is disingenious. The people who could care less are being deprived of money that they would use for other resources. The forced sophistication of a people is not moral. xxx |
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Currently, sports teams and other organizations play cities off of each other in bidding wars. And thus they wind up with far more than they would get if they paid for whatever they wanted themselves. The idea that somehow sports teams are a special class of business is erroneuous. They are no different than a large corporation -- and we don't build publically owned skyscrapes for ordinary businesses. Sports teams also constantly threaten to move, and take their names with them. It was Cleveland which put this idea on hold for the first time, because they told the Browns that they could leave the city, but they couldn't take the name with them. If the city put up the money for the stadium than surely they can make a claim on the name -- the taxpayers paid for the name at least. XXX . |
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For those stadiums that are already publically financed a system of putting the team and their stadium back on the tax roles and self-paying is necessary. That it might take a number of decades doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done. There is often a certain sense that because something is difficult or will take a long time than it is not worth it. XXX . |
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Politicians often view everything in short term election cycles. This leads to a constant state of apprehension and crisis. It is better to plan things on the long term, and set up the financing for these programs to be permanent endowments rather than always taxing today to pay today. Cities are not going anywhere. There is little chance that the major roads will be moved. The settlement and development patterns within the current cities is not going to be changed. Therefore it would be better if we treated virtually everything as historic -- and thus work at keeping up what we already have. XXX . |
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Cities should work to buy vacant or underused land along their outskirts, with the goal of turning this land into green belts. As much as we have highway belts we should have park belts around cities. Oddly, old railway lines, and current highways themselves make ideal habitats for natural parks. The parks would be more wildnerness than actual useable parks. But it is still good in the long run for the environmental conditions for the future. The more park land we begin to preserve today the easier it will be for the future -- and there is no doubt that these cities will exist in 100 years. The wholesale development of this land is ultimately detrimental to society. And that's why ultimately we will need more skyscrapers -- and we should start to make that trade off between a 12 story building next to a park than a more spread out 2 or 3 story building. XXX |
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