The Cobb County Commission met last night to vote on giving $300 million in tax subsidies to the Atlanta Braves for their $672 million stadium plan, and — the suspense is killing you, isn’t it? — it passed, of course. If there’s a surprise, given the way the entire deal was worked out in complete secrecy in the weeks before its surprise announcement 16 days ago, it’s that the vote wasn’t unanimous: Commissioner Lisa Cupid, who’d said before the vote that “I’m gonna have to pray about it,” ultimately voted no, saying she was uneasy about the rushed decision, but the other four commissioners gave the deal the thumbs-up.

According to the Peach Pundit news blog, the final memorandum of understanding included two amendments, neither of which have had their text revealed; the Pundit says that “one seemed to eliminate some sort of arterial train,” which could be a reference to the transit link to downtown Atlanta that was mentioned as a possibility in the original MOU and which Cobb’s Republican Party chair had disparaged as a deal-breaker because he didn’t want anyone “moving people into Cobb by rail from Atlanta.” (You know: those people.)

Transportation improvements, though, are just one of the things that have still yet to be worked out by the commission and the Braves. (A stadium operating agreement is another, which is important because it would determine how much the county would have to put up for future capital improvements to the stadium, as well as whether the Braves will have any out clauses that would allow them to break their lease early.) I wondered last week whether all the needed transportation improvements could be paid for with the $14 million that Cobb has committed to the project, and the Peach Pundit is wondering too, only with actual numbers:

Other transportation options are being explored to facilitate efficient traffic flow, including the utilization of the Cobb Community Transit bus system and the development of a trolley line connecting Cumberland-area businesses. Cobb County officials also plan sidewalk improvements around the site and have potential plans for a bus transit and pedestrian-only bridge connecting I-285 to the Galleria area.

Cobb County officials also are planning to build a bridge that will span I-285, connecting the Cobb Galleria office park to the stadium. Tim Lee gushed over this “Cheesecake Factory” bridge in a recent story. He stated it would have a shuttle that ran across it all the way to the Cumberland Mall/Galleria area. The bridge at 17th street in Atlanta cost approximately 40 million. That bridge was much easier to build than this one, as the interstate runs significantly below grade at the crossing point. The highway in this instance is well above grade, and the bridge will have to be much longer and built much higher. The grade cannot be very great or the shuttle, in whatever form it takes, will not be able to climb the bridge. This points to a bridge cost of conservatively 3 times the 17th street bridge, probably closer to 4. It is safe to say that this bridge, though specifically stated as being part of the the overall costs in the MOU, has not been budgeted.

The first paragraph discusses things that GDOT is already doing or planning to do, so there’s no cost there to Cobb taxpayers outside of what they already pay in state taxes.  The second and third paragraphs refer to “options,” “plans,” and “potential plans.” Is $14M enough to cover building pedestrian bridges and trolleys, in addition to the more likely items like sidewalks and CCT buses?  My guess is no.

Three to four times the cost of the 17th Street bridge would mean $120-160 million, which is a hell of an unfunded mandate — and that’s just one item on the Braves’ wish list. The Pundit says it’s “likely the state DOT will have to catch some of the total left over when the irrational exuberance fades”; if that’s going to require a state vote, then things could get interesting, given the murmurings of opposition to the deal in the legislature. Cobb County clearly intended last night’s vote to plant a stake in the ground that can’t easily be removed, but as we’ve seen in other cities, committing to a deal before knowing all the specifics is a great way to end up spending a whole lot more than you bargained for.

For those wondering when the Cobb County Commission is set to vote on the proposed Atlanta Braves stadium deal, it’s not until this evening, though I can’t find a precise time (I think 7 pm based on this calendar for 2014, but don’t quote me on that), let alone a webcast link.

One of two town hall meetings last night to discuss the plan drew an overflow crowd, with the Atlanta NPR station reporting that “from the look of people’s t-shirts and posters, the crowd was split evenly between supporters and detractors of the plan.” Meanwhile, a robocall campaign by the Atlanta Tea Party Patriots that offers to directly connect people with their county commissioner has all but shut down the commission’s phone lines.

Of the two (of five) commissioners who held town hall meetings last night, Bob Ott indicated that he was “a big fan” of mixed-use developments, while Lisa Cupid said she was unsure and “I’m gonna have to pray about it.”

The newly formed Cobb Citizens for Governmental Transparency — which includes such odd bedfellows as the county branches of the Tea Party and the Sierra Club — has two press conferences scheduled for today to call on the Cobb County Commission to delay tomorrow’s scheduled Atlanta Braves stadium vote, so that there’s time for “citizens [to] be appropriately informed and engaged when significant tax dollars are obligated or expended by our elected officials.” And at least one state legislator, Democratic state senator Jason Carter, says he’d like to see more time for discussion as well:

“As a fiscal conservative, it makes sense to me to be careful when talking about $300 million in taxes and debt assumption. I love the Braves. I have to believe that the deal is good for them and for Cobb County. But if that’s true, then there is no reason not to let people digest the plan before the vote. Frankly, this is not even a controversial position and I’d be surprised if the governor or any other candidates disagreed.”

If you think you recognize that smile and that surname, yes, he’s Jimmy Carter’s grandson. (Jack’s son, not Amy’s. Amy has apparently managed to keep such a low profile since reaching adulthood that her Wikipedia image is of her as a child holding a cat.) He’s also running for governor, so prone to making public statements like this, and from Decatur on the other side of Atlanta, so not really likely to be listened to by the Cobb commission. Still, given the likelihood that this whole project is going to need state approval at some point — if only for highway upgrades — it’ll be interesting to see whether more opposition emerges in the state legislature, especially from Atlanta representatives.

State representative Earl Ehrhart, meanwhile, — who helped engineer the Braves-Cobb deal, and who is a partner in a “mega sports park” under construction near the Cobb stadium site — says that any delay would risk Atlanta stealing the Braves back:

“Give them four weeks to let them spend that big Atlanta money?” he scoffed.

Yeah, because you know Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed is just champing at the bit to try to outbid Cobb’s offer — wait, what?

Enough of all the fumfering around with complaints about “inadequate parking” or fans mostly living in the northern suburbs (even if they mostly work downtown). Somebody has finally cut to the chase about why the Atlanta Braves really want out of Turner Field:

If you aren’t from Atlanta, you don’t understand the type of neighborhood Turner Field was built in and the type of environment fans coming to the games had to contend with for years…

[Joe’s Laundry & Cleaners proprietor Paul Kwan] added, “We have to face reality; they’re moving because of crime.”

Kwan nodded from behind the heavy metal screen at his counter that makes him look like a jailbird.

A heavy metal screen at the counter of a laundry/cleaning business, to protect the owner and his employees from both his customers and the residents of the community surrounding Turner Field? That is the environment Atlanta Braves’ fans must endure before and most notably AFTER an evening of cheering on their hometown heroes.

The author of this piece — titled “Who wants to fight crime on way to ballpark?” — is none other than former Braves reliever John Rocker, who knows a little something about being terrified of city neighborhoods. But it’s hardly a unique opinion — you don’t have to scratch the surface of Braves fan commentary too hard to find the sentiment that driving downtown to Turner Field isn’t distasteful because of lack of parking or traffic tieups or fear of being haunted by the ghost of Chief Noc-a-Homa, but rather because of the immediate environs:

I'm excited about this new stadium. I love the Ted but the location is horrible. Glad we're moving away from the ghetto.

— Braves Talk (@Braves_Talk) November 11, 2013

“@Talkmaster: Here ya go! Here's my thoughts on the Braves' great escape. http://t.co/UHUTCgfZbG” 100% Agree! Crime drove the Braves away.

— James Moore (@Moorepheus10) November 18, 2013

@kwyrauch @fieldofschemes @craigcalcaterra I've witnessed a drive by shooting in a parking lot right next to Turner in those neighborhoods.

— Rob (@rcbGT) November 19, 2013

So, is the area surrounding Turner Field really a teeming mass of criminal activity? It’s not actually so much a neighborhood per se — a large chunk of the historically black neighborhood of Summerhill was bulldozed to make way for Turner Field — as a stadium-in-a-sea-of-parking with some residential areas adjacent to it. And if you look at a heatmap of crime stats, Turner Field and environs isn’t especially high-crime: There’s a moderate amount of crime in a small area to the southeast, and a fair bit of crime on the other side of the highway, but your chances of being a crime victim in and around the ballpark isn’t any greater than, for example, some areas right near the new stadium site in Cobb County.

Still, “Turner Field = downtown = crime” is certainly the perception among many Braves fans. And given that the missing piece of that equation appears to be “= ghetto,” it has a lot of people wondering if what suburban Braves fans are afraid of is something else entirely. “The real reason for the move? Separating the team’s largely white fanbase from Atlanta’s black residents,” wrote the International Business Times’ Eric Brown last week:

Atlanta itself is a majority-black city, with 54 percent of the population identifying as black. The Summerhill neighborhood surrounding Turner Field has an even larger black population: 89 percent. For many white, suburban Braves fans, the neighborhood surrounding Turner Field has never been particularly appealing, despite the fact that Summerhill boasts a lower crime rate than most of urban Atlanta.

It’s a line of reasoning that warrants even more consideration now that the Braves have proposed outfitting their new suburban stadium with a mock-urban walking district far from central Atlanta and the people who live there. And while the team’s MOU includes a mention of possibly extending public transit to the site from downtown Atlanta, Cobb County Republican chair Joe Dendy has already made clear that he wants any transit improvements to be solely for suburbanites: “It is absolutely necessary the solution is all about moving cars in and around Cobb and surrounding counties from our north and east where most Braves fans travel from, and not moving people into Cobb by rail from Atlanta.” A sentiment that immediately found favor from several Braves fans tweeters:

@MrBrianKenny @neildemause Name me any suburb that wants public transportation connecting to the city. This Atlanta situation is a joke

— Richard Arce (@Richard_C_Arce) November 13, 2013

@MrBrianKenny @neildemause If you lived in a suburb would you want a bus shuttling people into you backyard? #IWouldNot #SuburbanBraves

— Reggie (@TheRealReg12) November 13, 2013

This is way, way more complicated, obviously, than “Braves fans are racist.” Suburban attitudes toward urban neighborhoods are a complex stew of race, class, and rumor — I recall in the 1980s a friend of mine from Manhattan’s even-then-gentrified Upper West Side being asked by a college classmate if he felt safe walking around in his neighborhood unarmed — and it’s perfectly possible for someone to feel uneasy about going to Turner Field because they saw (or heard about) a crime there, or because they saw black people on the drive in and assumed that meant crime, or because they saw panhandlers and panhandlers mean the ghetto and the ghetto means run away. Or all, or none of the above.

Still, given that we’re talking here about the first baseball team in 40 years to move away from downtown to the suburbs — and that it’s baseball’s only team that resides in the Deep South, though Atlanta likes to pretend otherwise — it’s hard to see all this talk about fear of crime as a reason for the move without getting at least a little bit queasy about the racial dynamics at work. Even before it got John Rocker as its poster child.

And we have pictures of what the new Atlanta Braves stadium would look like! Or rudimentary overhead renderings, anyway:

Aside from the fact that apparently the Braves’ plan includes casting all the rest of Cobb County into darkness, the first thing one notices about this plan is that it is absolutely jam-packed with buildings: buildings surrounding the new stadium, buildings surrounding the plaza that would sit adjacent to the stadium, buildings lining the “entertainment street” that would lead from the stadium to nothing much in particular. There would be so many buildings, in fact, that the Braves appear to have left out room for parking entirely: The accompanying article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution says that there would be 2,000 parking spaces under the stadium, plus another 4,000 elsewhere on the site, but from the renderings it’s tough to see where this would go or how cars would get there. (It doesn’t help that the rendering doesn’t seem to match the schematic — there’s what looks like a road leading to underground garages on the rendering, for example, but where is it on the schematic?)

It’s never a good idea to take early designs too seriously — there’s a reason I like to call them “vaportecture” — but clearly the Braves are going for one of those fake urban districts that are all the rage, giving people the chance to get out of their cars and walk around, pretending they’re in a city but without all that, you know, city stuff. Which leads us to… but no, I think that deserves a post all its own.

Okay, I’ve done a quick perusal of Cobb County’s proposed MOU with the Atlanta Braves, and here’s what I’ve come away with:

• The Braves and the county would split 50/50 the cost of a “capital maintenance fund.” Annual amount: to be determined, with details to be spelled out in a later Stadium Operating Agreement. It’s more than a bit worrying, though, that the Braves are committing only to pay for upgrades that “exceed industry standards and that are not reasonably necessary to maintain the Stadium as a competitive MLB facility.” As we’ve seen before, these kinds of “state of the art” clauses have been interpreted by teams — and by arbitrators — to require anything up to and including renovations that cost more than twice what the stadium cost to build in the first place.
• Nobody knows yet what the infrastructure costs will be. That’s left to a separate Transportation and Infrastructure Agreement that’s yet to be written. The included wish list, though, goes far beyond the new pedestrian bridge over I-285 and new exit ramp that the county has already agreed to pay for, to include a Windy Ridge Parkway Connector and other improvements extending northeast across I-75 to Powers Ferry, plus public transit connecting to Route 10 and possibly downtown Atlanta. (The last of which will not make the Cobb County Republican chair happy at all.)
• The Braves would agree to a 30-year lease. But there could be out clauses in the Stadium Operating Agreement that’s — stop me if you’ve heard this — yet to be negotiated.
• The mystery about why the Braves’ contribution to the project is anywhere from $322 million to $372 million is explained: The Braves are committing $372 million toward a $672 million stadium, but if they can cut the price tag they can keep the savings, up to $50 million worth.

The upshot, then, is that there are a ton of details that aren’t going to be worked out by the time of next Tuesday’s county commission vote — details that could amount to tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in costs shifting one way or another. More and more, this is looking less like the county is ready for a final vote on the project as it claims, and more like the county is not ready at all, which is why it’s telling everyone in sight this is a final vote, so that once the details are known they can say “no backsies.” This is less a done deal than a hastily scrawled-upon napkin that everyone is hoping to get signed fast, and we can work out the specifics later.

Common Cause Georgia, which led the opposition to the Atlanta Falcons stadium deal, has called on Cobb County to hold a public referendum on whether to spend $300 million of tax money on a $672 million Braves stadium, something that otherwise will ostensibly be approved with only a single county commission vote next Tuesday. And the county’s response is … really, I can’t put it any better than Deadspin:

A Cobb County commissioner on why residents won’t get to vote on putting $300 million toward the Braves’ stadium:“It would have to be a special election, and that would cost taxpayers 300, 400 thousand dollars.” [CBS Atlanta]

In other news, the county’s proposed memorandum of understanding with the Braves was issued yesterday, giving the public a whole seven days to comment publicly on it. (And by “comment publicly” I mean of course “take to Twitter,” because it’s not like the commission has any public hearings scheduled before the vote.) You can download the PDF of the MOU here; it’s long and tedious, as MOUs are, but give me a couple hours and I’ll try to post my thoughts then.

You know what would be a lovely birthday present for me today? If someone would make my job easier by compiling a list of all the latest developments in the controversy over the Atlanta Braves‘ proposed move to Cobb County — oh, Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein, Jim Galloway and Daniel Malloy and Smyrna Patch’s Wendy Parker, how thoughtful!

The highlights of the highlights:

• Late on Friday, Cobb officials released an outline of a Braves fan transportation plan that relies on “a system of golf-like trams” to shuttle fans to and from their cars parked in existing lots at nearby sites like the Cobb Galleria Centre, nearby hotels, and office parks. Only 6,000 dedicated parking spaces are being planned at the stadium site, which is 2,500 less than at the Braves’ current home of Turner Field, in order to leave more room for the surrounding development that the team wants to build.
• An undisclosed pro-stadium group paid for a “push poll” — a marketing effort where arguments on behalf of a project are disguised as a survey — last Friday, with robocalls “asking” Cobb County residents whether the “fact” that property taxes won’t be increased make it more likely they’d support a new Braves’ stadium, as well as “Does knowing that the new comprehensive transportation plan already exists and is fully funded make it more or less likely you’ll support the Braves’ move to Cobb?” As the AJC trio notes, it’s not clear what the strategy is behind the robocalls when there’s no public vote planned, but hey, it can never hurt to drum up public support, right?
• On the other side, the creator of the new 300millionreasons.com website and anti-stadium-deal petition has been identified as libertarian activist and anti-birther blogger Loren Collins. The petition is currently up to 483 signatures, though I don’t think there’s any easy way to tell how many of those of from Cobb County residents.
• The Atlanta Tea Party and the Sierra Club are opposing the deal, with a joint rally scheduled for next Monday night. “The deal was made behind closed doors and we believe it will result in higher taxes,” said the Atlanta Tea Party’s Debbie Dooley. “We also have problems with land deals made around the stadium, because it seems like the politically-connected found a gold mine while taxpayers will be shown the shaft.” That’s not actually the shaft that “given the shaft” refers to, but points for the attempt at a mining pun!
• Some unidentified investors found out about the Braves deal ahead of time and bought up properties around the new stadium site in the weeks ahead of the announcement. And speaking of land grabs, the AJC wants you to pay 99 cents to read more about that, so no further details are forthcoming at the moment.

The biggest news here is the bit about the trams, which seems absolutely nuts — most everyone is probably familiar with these kind of park-and-ride systems from airport parking, for example (though the Braves seem to have in mind something more like these), and equally familiar with the fact that it means showing up way earlier before your departure time and taking way longer to get out of dodge once it’s time to leave. Add in that all 41,000 Braves fans are going to be arriving at more or less the same time — and all by car, remember, because Cobb County doesn’t approve of those people being allowed across county lines by public transit — and they’re going to need an insane number of trams to avoid massive wait times.

It’s especially odd since “inadequate number of parking spaces” is one of the reasons the Braves are giving for wanting to move out of Turner Field. But I guess “We’re trying for a development land grab, and anyway people can just park in a mall lot somewhere and wait for a tram to the game” didn’t have the same ring to it.

Much of the attention on Cobb County’s $300 million stadium subsidy deal for the Atlanta Braves has focused on the roughly $120 million a year that would be paid for by extending a hike in local property taxes. But the next biggest chunk of the public share — $5.15 million a year, or maybe $75 million worth of stadium cost total — would come from an increased business tax in the Cumberland Community Improvement District immediately surrounding the new stadium. The idea is that local businesses would get the bulk of the benefit from having the Braves playing next door, so they should be the ones footing the bill.

And what do the businesses themselves think of this logic? CBS Atlanta asked one:

Uncle Vito’s New York Pizza manager Richard Brown, whose business falls in the district, has his doubts.

“I don’t see us getting so much of a benefit that it outweighs the amount of taxes that we’re going to end up having to pay,” Brown said.

His company may not directly have to pay taxes, but the shopping center that his restaurant sits in would, which he worries could trickled down to him in the form of rent.

And he believes that Braves fans will end up getting meals inside the new stadium complex and might not patronize businesses in the area when the game’s done.

“The people are just going to the game and then they’re going home,” Brown said. “All it basically does is just cause a traffic jam for them.”

This is just one business owner, mind you, so it’s possible all his neighbors are just thrilled about taking on higher tax bills in exchange for baseball foot traffic. (Well, not foot traffic because no one will be walking to games. What do you call traffic when it’s in cars? Oh, right, “traffic.”) But Brown does have a point: The whole reason the Braves are putting in $372 million of their own money for this project, after all, is that they are hoping for increased revenues from a new stadium, and one way to get those is by sticking in more restaurants and souvenir outlets and other places for fans to spend their money without venturing beyond the stadium walls. And we’ve certainly seen local merchants complaining about crappy business outside other new ballparks.

But, hey, these guys don’t get to vote on it anyway, because the CCID can raise taxes without a vote of any kind, so who cares what they think? I mean, this guy cares, obviously, but he’s just some guy with a WordPress site, and — oh, yeah…

The Marietta Daily Journal, which is emerging as the go-to source for early news on the Atlanta Braves stadium plan (it was the first to announce the deal on Monday), has some more details today about Cobb County’s proposed financing for the project:

• The Braves would buy 60 acres of land at the intersection of Interstates 75 and 285, then deed the 15 acres required for the stadium and 2,000 parking spaces (why only 2,000 for a 41,000-seat stadium?) to the Cobb County coliseum authority. The rest would remain Braves property, and would pay property taxes, which relieves one of my concerns from yesterday. Still, the stadium itself being exempt from property taxes is an additional subsidy to the team, though I don’t have figures for how much of one.
• The previously announced county expenses will include money for a new pedestrian bridge over I-285 and a new exit ramp off the interstate, though it’s still unclear whether that will be sufficient to allow Braves fans to get to the game without massive traffic tie-ups.
• The $8.7 million a year that the county would get from “reallocating existing property taxes” would actually come from taking three property-tax surcharges that are currently funding parks projects, and which were set to expire in 2017 and 2018 once those projects were paid off, and instead extending them for another 30 years. This is “existing” taxes in the sense that it’s taxes that are being paid now, but it’s also undeniably a tax hike in that property owners will be charged more in taxes in the future — an extra $26 a year for a $200,000 home, according to the Journal — if the stadium is approved than if it isn’t.

Cobb County chair Tim Lee, naturally, says all this will be more than worth it, since “this small investment by the residents will bring back and yield a significant growth in our digest, in our sales tax, in our economic viability.” But how likely is that? Let’s use our old friend, math.

In terms of sales taxes, Georgia Public Broadcasting reported yesterday that losing the Braves would cost Atlanta about $4 million a year in sales tax revenues, according to a study by Georgia State University economist Bruce Seaman. (The state of Georgia, he concluded, would lose pretty much nothing, as spending would just shift from one part of the state to another.) Atlanta has a 1% local sales tax surcharge, so that would imply $400 million a year in spending by Braves fans, a figure that defies belief given that the Braves only bring in $225 million a year total, including cable fees and other items that aren’t subject to sales tax. GPB didn’t provide a link to Seaman’s study, but presumably he applied some kind of multiplier that assumes that Braves fan spending recirculates throughout the local economy — the number still seems high, but let’s go with it for now.

Cobb County actually has a 2% local sales tax compared to Atlanta’s 1% local surcharge, so if the same money is spent in Cobb instead of Atlanta, the county would be looking at a gain of $8 million a year. That would be enough to pay off about $120 million in stadium bonds, or 40% of the county’s $300 million cost.

What about the “growth in our [property tax] digest”? Currently, property tax receipts for all of Cobb County run about $190 million a year. That means that for property tax receipts to rise enough to pay off another $180 million in stadium costs — that’d be about $12 million a year — the average value of every parcel of Cobb land, including those 20 miles away in the opposite corner of the county, would have to rise in value by 6.3% solely by virtue of sharing the county with a baseball stadium. Or everything within three miles could double in value, which would have the same effect.

Given that previous studies have found that property values only rise very slightly when a new stadium is built — just over 3% for properties in the immediate vicinity of a new MLB stadium, according to one report — the idea of either the stadium district doubling in value or properties way out in Powder Springs gaining 6% seems pretty far-fetched.

So, Cobb County would certainly steal some revenues from Atlanta by virtue of hosting the Braves, which would offset its costs somewhat — but Cobb taxpayers would still likely be looking at a loss in the $100-200 million range. And that’s not accounting for the opportunity cost of taking 15 acres of land and handing it to the Braves tax-free for their stadium, removing the possibility of future development there that might actually pay taxes. Or the opportunity cost of what else the county might do with its $300 million that could increase economic activity (and tax receipts) some other way. It’s not the worst stadium deal ever — that’s going to be a tough record to break — but it still looks like an awfully high price for Cobb taxpayers to pay for a slightly shorter drive to the ballgame.