Friday roundup: Jackson County counteroffers different $300m toward Royals stadium, Pinellas County passed on Rays naming rights money

Well, this was certainly another week. It’s tempting to say that all the other continuing disasters going on put into perspective the relative importance of worrying about shoveling a few billion dollars at billionaires — but then, injustices are injustices, and it sure doesn’t seem like the big problems are going away anytime soon, so we’d better be able to multitask if we want to address any of them anytime soon. (Ha ha, anyone who’s read this site or lived in the world should know from experience that no one is going to address anything ever no matter how big or small, that was just a little joke between us.)

We’ll always have schadenfreude, though, so away we go with the week’s news roundup:

• Jackson County Executive Frank White has submitted a counterproposal to Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman on a new stadium: Instead of the county giving Sherman $300 million in sales tax proceeds over 40 years, what if it gave Sherman $300 million in money from some unspecified source over 20 years? That sounds significantly worse to me, and probably to anyone else who’s ever decided between a short-term and long-term mortgage, but White says “our counterproposal was grounded in Jackson County’s responsibility to not just meet the County’s preset needs but also to safeguard our future,” and if you can’t trust a former Royals second baseman, who can you trust?
• Pinellas County Administrator Barry Burton says the county “thought about” asking for a cut of naming rights or for ticket taxes to be used to help pay for a new $1.3 billion Tampa Bay Rays stadium that is projected to cost the public more than $600 million, but decided “simpler is better.” Burton added, “I can assure you, the ask [from the Rays] was far greater,” which at least shows that one side in these talks understand the principle of “if you don’t ask, you don’t get it” that was first pointed out by … Gandhi? Really, internet? I’m flagging this one for the fact-checker.
• A poll of 82 Oklahoma City residents — okay, that’s a pathetic sample size, but let’s just go with it — found that they opposed extending a 1% sales tax surcharge to pay for a new $900 million Thunder arena by a 53-22% margin. This actually matters because OKC voters will get to decide on the arena plan in a December 12 referendum, but it’s still early yet, nobody’s unloaded the truckloads of lobbyists.
• FC Cincinnati co-CEO Jeff Berding has his new publicly funded soccer stadium now, but wants the city to build a new arena as well because — oh wait, we covered this already a year and a half ago, Berding is just using his positions as chair of the local tourism board and local business board to get the Cincinnati Enquirer to let him stump for his pet project. “Think of the economic impact for Taylor Swift for two nights,” Berding told the Enquirer, which utterly failed to check whether Taylor Swift’s economic impact is really all that much, but it also failed to check whether “Not re-doing the arena is costing Cincinnati national cache” is really spelled like that, so maybe this entire article should be taken as a cry for help from the tattered remnants of Gannett.
• People in D.C. want the former RFK Stadium site to be parks, an amateur sports complex, a skateboard park, “a whole new city [called] ‘Justice City’,” and probably other things as well at a community meeting on the subject, while “a survey showed that 67% of those questioned said they did not want a new stadium to replace RFK.” Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris is presumably part of the other 33%, but then, he lives in a mansion in Miami with 10.5 bathrooms, so presumably isn’t eligible to be surveyed.
• Black Clergy of Philadelphia and Vicinity have announced their support for the proposed Philadelphia 76ers arena on the border of the city’s Chinatown, pointing to the $50 million community benefits agreement team owner Josh Harris has promised, plus promises to have Black-owned businesses run 40% of the concessions operations at the arena. The Black clergy group also backed Harris’s last arena plan before that one fell apart, at least they’re consistent about their price.