Good news, everyone! Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai says he’s not going to put a tax subsidy for a San Antonio Spurs arena on the May 3 ballot, because nobody knows how much tax money would actually be involved:
State law allows the county to raise the hotel portion of the tax to 2%.
Asked Tuesday if raising the tax was part of the discussion, Sakai said, “Those are all preliminary questions that need to be addressed.”
At least, there won’t be a public vote until November at the earliest, by which time the judge (yes, Texas counties are run by judges, it’s left over from when Texas was its own country) hopes to have those questions answered: “We are moving forward to find the win-win solution in this complex issue that we call the new Spurs arena.”
Finding a “win-win” in funneling an unknown but huge amount of money to the local NBA owner to replace a 22-year-old arena seems like a challenge, especially when one main argument for is “locals bring visitors because of the authenticity,” but sure, okay. The basic principle of “maybe people should know what they’re voting on before they vote” is a good one, so here’s hoping that Sakai actually gets Spurs owner Peter Holt and the city to cough up some financial details before moving ahead with a public ballot measure. If nothing else, it might make those polls Holt has been doing of San Antonio residents on the arena plan more valid if there’s an actual dollar figure involved.
The utter incoherence of “locals bring visitors because of the authenticity” aside… the most ironic thing about cities and their residents’ craving for “authenticity” — most famously among the young, hipster cohort — is that they’re all trying to be unique and real in the exact same way.
Also, just quietly, I do wonder if (or when) Austin will start coming closer to the Spurs arena picture. They already play a game or two a year there in the name of “market engagement,” and the popular perception outside of Texas would be that any move between those cities would be akin to the Nets moving from Jersey to Brooklyn (even though those two cities are as far from each other as Philly is from NYC).