Only two weeks to go before a public vote on your stadium renovation plan that everybody hates? Here’s a creative way to get people thinking of it as a jobs package instead of a $127 million stadium subsidy: Invite people to apply for jobs at the stadium that don’t exist yet!
As the team touts a proposed $350 million renovation of Sun Life Stadium as a job creator worthy of tax dollars, the Dolphins will open up Sun Life Stadium on Thursday to aspiring construction workers, laborers and others who would want to work on the project…
Rick Beasley, head of the South Florida Workforce employment agency … praised the Dolphins for getting a head start in lining up local workers for what would be one of the largest construction profits underway in Miami-Dade.
“Some people can be skeptical and say this is just a ploy to get people out to vote,” he said. “For me, I want to make sure we have people in the system ready” to take a job.
Transparent vote ploy or sop to desperate unemployed Florida construction workers? Why can’t it be both?
Dear God, I hope that the voters in South Florida remain strong and aren’t swayed by these cheap tactics.
Neil, I just read the following story today by Mike Rosenberg in the Contra Costa Times, a Bay Area newspaper: (http://www.contracostatimes.com/breaking-news/ci_23142211/49ers-new-stadiums-long-term-costs-drop-by
The gist is that the city of Santa Clara is going to refinance the loans they took out to build the new 49ers stadium, to take advantage of lower interest rates.
The spin is that this refinance ‘might’ save the city $90 million over the life of the repayment cycle.
I’m frightened, of course, solely because it’s Goldman Sachs doing the refinance, and (as Matt Taibbi so memorably put it here: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405) Goldman Sachs is “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money”, so I certainly can’t trust its motives.
Mike Rosenberg says that Goldman will charge the city some $69 million just to refinance the loans, and says there’s the potential for the refinancing effort to generate even more fees and interest charges in the long run.
In your experience, is this yet another backdoor by which the city of Santa Clara is being taken?
No, it sounds like Santa Clara and the 49ers lucked out that the economy tanked enough to keep interest rates low, but not enough so that PSL sales were hurt.
In other words, they benefitted from this:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-23/wealthiest-americans-only-winners-in-recovery-pew-says.html
This may actually be the most cynical thing I’ve ever seen a team do to try and get a stadium. A fake job fair for actual desperate unemployed people? I’m trying to think of something worse and failing.
Well they better hope they out reach to “minority” groups and let them know about these “opportunities”… if not they will come after you!
http://www.mercurynews.com/southbayfootball/ci_23100585/49ers-stadium-leaders-refute-racism-charges-lodged-by
Why didn’t they just call it an opportunity-cost-fair?
Oh, I forgot, honesty in advertising laws are limited in scope…
Still, it’s nice of the Dolphins to let some poor people come and stand by pictures and mockups of the stadium. Because despite the fact the taxpayers are footing the bill, most of them will never be able to afford to go inside. Nor, likely, will they qualify for any of the alleged toilet cleaning jobs…