🚀 go-pugleaf

Ray Shea (shea@news.eden.com) wrote:

: But why does bringing baseball to Austin have to necessarily involve
: spending taxpayer money?  We could have had a AA team absolutely free, but
: the City Council turned them down in their rush to pile up more city debt.

For one thing, that's the way it's done when a city brings in a team. 
Not only is Austin the largest city in the country without a professional 
team of any kind, it would be one of only three where the city didn't pay 
for the whole stadium outright. The proposed Austin Swing plan is for 
matching funds: $10 million from the City, $12 million from the club.

Now, some basics: when you "pile up debt," you get an asset -- like 
when you buy a car or a house. It's not like blowing the cash on a trip 
to Hawaii (or on a consulting study, if you're a city). In this case, the 
asset generates revenue for the City -- for you and for me. The 
projections show the City's investment being paid off in two to three 
years. After that, the revenue keeps coming in, and those are non-tax 
dollars.

I'm not a baseball fan, but I think that the ballpark is a sound 
investment, and I will vote for it on October 7th. 

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_________________________
Terry Dyke  tdyke@bga.com 
Opinions expressed are my own