OKC approves $30m in tax money for overruns on shapeshifting minor-league soccer stadium

The Oklahoma City council voted unanimously yesterday to approve using $30 million in tax money to pay for cost overruns on a new Energy F.C. soccer stadium, which isn’t exactly surprising since the council already discussed doing this two weeks ago. There are several amazing bits, though, that are worthy of note:

• Amazing quote #1: “In the original plan for this stadium, there was no provision for land or funding for land, and we have a unique opportunity right now,” said Kenton Tsoodle, president of The Alliance for Economic Development of Oklahoma City. I’ve read this five times now, and can’t interpret it as anything other than the initial stadium plan neglected to budget for either land or the actual cost of stadium construction, now the public has the rare opportunity of being allowed to contribute another $30 million, which only really makes sense as an infomercial pitch.
• Amazing quote #2: “We’re siting the stadium, which had no funding in MAPS, and we’re doing so with a donation, which is much appreciated and we thank the team for that pledge,” said OKC mayor David Holt. Thanking team owners for contributing anything to the cost of their own stadium is fresh rhetorical ground, but then this is the same guy who touted a plan to fund a Thunder arena with a $780 million “sales tax that will not raise taxes,” so words truly mean different things to Holt.
• Amazing rendering #1:
  
  Why are they building a soccer stadium with a double deck at the end line, and only a tiny single deck along the side, where fans actually want to sit? Also why is one guy on the white team standing in an offside position way down the pitch, and does it have anything to do with the fact that it seems like three of his teammates have been red carded, leaving the team with only eight players on the pitch? And why does this entire design bear zero resemblance to:
• Amazing rendering #2:
  This looks a little more like soccer at first glance, but there’s still a lot of weirdness: the number of people (mostly women) who are paying no attention to the match, the four women in identical red floppy hats and green scarves standing in the same row at lower right, the fact that one of the teams pictured on the video board (in black) appears not to be either team playing in the actual game (which features blue vs. white with a diagonal red stripe).

Taken together, this all looks like OKC officials throwing out a whole lot of half-assed justifications and quarter-assed clip art in defense of spending $71 million on a stadium for a minor-league soccer team that hasn’t played in two seasons and only drew 2,200 fans per game the last time it did. Surely once they have a 10,000-seat stadium they’ll fill the place, at least once Holt gets funding approved for his floppy-hat clone army.