July 16, 2005
Flags on the play in Indy
That all-but-complete $687 million Indianapolis Colts stadium project remains everything but done, as Mayor Bart Peterson says "fairly significant issues" have forced the postponement of a planned August 1 groundbreaking. Peterson didn't provide details, but did indicate that a planned $3 ticket tax is "a deal-breaker" for the Colts - which would be a pretty significant issue indeed, since the ticket tax is one of the only chunks of stadium change that would come out of the team's pocket instead of taxpayers'.
Meanwhile, Indianapolis Star sports columnist Bob Kravitz has penned an extraordinary mea culpa on his prior support for the Colts stadium plan:
The city opened pools later and will close them earlier in the season because there's no money.The city is going to cut dozens of police and firefighters out of the payroll by attrition, with the threat of layoffs in the future.There are dwindling resources to fund pensions for those same police and firefighters.Meanwhile, we've just come through a recent 32-day stretch in which four young people have been shot to death in Indy.More police, or more club seats? ...It's a question of civic priorities. We can find the will to raise taxes for a Convention Center/stadium project, but we can't find the money to fund essential city services.
Kravitz even asks - and answers - the question that must be on his readers' minds:
So where have you been all this time? Why the rhetoric now? What purpose is there when the deed is essentially done?Fair questions.And I have no good answers.This should have been written far earlier. The harder questions should have been asked earlier, if only to elicit more persuasive answers. But I fell in line. I let my personal desire to keep the Colts -- for obvious reasons -- cloud my judgment on the issue. And in a city whose landscape has changed for the better with major civic projects, I didn't have the fortitude to challenge a time-tested formula.So, I'm guilty as charged.
Posted by: leftwingcracker at July 16, 2005 04:04 PM
Posted by: George at July 16, 2005 09:25 PM
