One sports stadium patsy leaves, one enters: Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai, who last month declared that he would put a hold on any public referendum on using taxpayer money for a new San Antonio Spurs arena until somebody figured out how much it would cost, now says ah, hell with it, let’s get this show on the road:
The Commissioners Court voted 4-1 Tuesday to allow Sakai to negotiate a memorandum of understanding with the city of San Antonio and the Spurs that would create a framework for them to discuss holding a future venue tax election.
“This is just a starting point to collaboratively assess, explore and evaluate,” Sakai said. “There is no deal. There is no agreement.”
No, it’s not an agreement, but an MOU would be an agreement, so an agreement is very much what Sakai is now working on. The San Antonio Express-News reports that an arena deal could include two piles of tax money: county hotel taxes and county car rental taxes, which would be worth $397 million if the county hotel tas remains at its current 1.75% or $449 million if it’s raised to 2%. The newspaper neglected to indicate if those numbers are present value or cumulative over many years, and if so how many years. (RIP, editors, you had a good run.)
So let’s try to do some quick calculations: The county hotel tax amounted to $21.3 million in revenue in 2023, while the car rental tax was $12.2 million. Extend that out over 30 years, and you could pay off about $500 million in arena costs by siphoning off the taxes to pay for a new arena rather than keeping them to spend on other public needs — and likely more than that if hotel and car rental spending increases over time.
Sakai and other county officials emphasized they also have a responsibility to maintain the Frost Bank Center and Freeman Coliseum, which are estimated to need at least $100 million worth of upgrades and help improve the surrounding area.
The tax has been used in the past for projects like San Antonio River improvements, performing arts and amateur sports facilities.
“That pool of money is the pool of money you have to do all of those things,” [Bexar County Manager David] Smith said.
Presumably all of that pool of money has until now been used to do other things, so really any money spent on an arena would come at the cost of not doing other stuff. It would be nice to have a list of where that money is going currently, but again, this is 2025 journalism we’re dealing with here, we need to temper our expectations.
All of this would still need voter approval in November, because Sakai missed the deadline for a spring referendum by waiting until now. At least that gives San Antonio residents nine months to ask some pointed questions — local journalists can start things off if they want, but I’m not exactly holding my breath.
Interesting. I am not opposed to a county judge intervening in these types of things (it might help to reduce the amount of patently illegal things that tend to happen around sports cartel subsidy plays…), but I do wonder why and how it has ended up in the hands of a county judge to draft an MOU for county officials and private interests to work from?
I assume somebody asked him in? Or is this an extension of him blocking an original agreement or something?
Anyway, I always find it interesting that the cost of “continuing to maintain” existing facilities is always used to justify new developments.
You have to pay to maintain the shiny new properties too. In some cases the left over problems from construction and poorly designed or improperly installed items can actually INCREASE the cost of maintenance on a replacement building for a few years.
After that, I would agree that a new building should be cheaper to maintain. Unless it is much bigger and includes many features that the old building did not… which is almost always the case with sports palaces. The $100m fund being discussed here sounds like it will still be needed for ongoing improvements to shiny new $1bn palace as well… and that would certainly be consistent with other new or newish facilities (the Baseball stadium in Milwaukee, anyone? Hey, wasn’t that built because the upgrades needed for county stadium were going to be so expensive? And now… 20yrs later the new stadium “needs” $500m in improvements?) we taxpayers are regularly asked to ‘upgrade’.
I have no way of knowing if it is true, of course, but I have heard many operators of privately funded (*) arenas in major centres like NY and Toronto claim that they have spent far more on upgrades over the building’s 20-25yr life thus far than they did to build it.
So, to recap, building these things is our (financial) responsibility.
Maintaining these things is our financial responsibility.
Upgrading them is our financial responsibility.
And paying for demolition or major improvements is also our financial responsibility
Where is the “private” part of the public-private partnership in all this?
Don’t “county judges” basically run counties in Texas? Thought I read that somewhere.
Anyway, as to the general point of the story:
So they voted….
…to allow a guy to negotiate….
…a deal….
…that would create a framework….
…for them to discuss….
…a future vote.
Who says government doesn’t work?
Yes, county judges running things is a Texas thing:
https://www.star-telegram.com/news/politics-government/article266584351.html
Awesome! Just like Cool Hand Luke!
Ok, so in all seriousness…. the title judge is a bit misleading in these cases isn’t it? I mean, they aren’t your standard court judges doing administrative/negotiating work in their spare time (although since they are elected, I guess they could be anything…)
“Most have broad judicial duties, such as presiding over misdemeanor criminal and small civil cases, probate matters and appeals from the Justice of the Peace Court.”
There should be 2 different categories, maintenance, such as painting every 5 years. Upgrades would be another category. If the original scoreboard is good for 30 years, replacing it after 10 years because 4k HD scoreboard are so much better is an upgrade. I suspect most of the “required maintenance” team owners keep claiming is so essential to keep the team where it is are actually upgrades. Sorry, but most people can’t afford to constantly be buying the newest car to get the latest bells and whistles. Team owners, you can, so pay for those upgrades yourself.