Some of Royals’ “community benefits” spending wouldn’t arrive until 2064, team letter reveals

Sorry to keep you hanging: Wednesday has come and gone, what are the Kansas City Royals and Chiefs owners prepared to offer as part of their community benefits agreements in exchange for $500-700 million in county sales tax money for stadium projects, as promised Tuesday? Kansas City Star, whatcha got?

The teams shared broad outlines of those agreements on Wednesday afternoon in a three-page news release less than two weeks before Election Day. They did not share the actual documents themselves and the teams did not respond immediately to The Star’s request for those agreements with the county negotiating group.

Well, that’s not great. The Royals and Chiefs press releases (there were actually two, for a total of six pages) contained laundry lists of the things they would be willing to fund (healthcare! workforce assistance! education!) without much about how the money part would work, but the Star was able to extract some details there:

What the news release did not say is that the Royals’ contribution, at least, would be in annual installments of $3.5 million. Over the 40-year term of the sales tax and lease, that adds up to $140 million. That’s according to a letter that the Royals sent to county legislators with Tuesday’s date on it that was obtained by The Star before Wednesday’s announcement.

So, $140 million dollars dollars over 40 years is not anything like $140 million now: In terms of present value — how much money you’d need to set aside today to spin off $3.5 million a year for the next four decades — it’s worth more like $60 million. And as the community groups opposed to Royals owner John Sherman’s CBA offer have pointed out, Sherman already gives $3 million a year to charity, so upping that by $500,000 dollars dollars would be chump change. (The Chiefs owners currently donate $3.5 million a year, so their offer of $2 million a year with increases starting in 2035 would actually be a reduction in charitable spending.)

And speaking of the community coalition that on Tuesday announced they would be opposing the teams’ sales-tax hike campaign, did yesterday’s press releases do anything to turn their heads?

Gathered outside the Jackson County Courthouse in downtown Kansas City, members of the Good Jobs and Affordable Housing for All Coalition chanted “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Vote No, Vote No, Vote No” as group leaders gave short speeches faulting the Royals for not meeting their demands.

At least Sherman and the Hunt family still have friends at KCTV5, which not only printed an article that only quoted a single team official with no additional research, it included a link to “Here are the groups endorsing the Jackson County stadium sales tax question” with no link to the groups opposing it. Thankfully somebody in Kansas City knows how to uphold the traditional principles of stenography journalism!