San Antonio Spurs owner Peter Holt proposed a plan late last week that would require the public to cover between $700 million and $1 billion of the cost of a new $1.2-1.5 billion arena, and how did the local paper of record, the San Antonio Express-News, cover it?
The Spurs are looking to kick in $500 million for a downtown arena, spend another $500 million on nearby development projects, and contribute $60 million for childcare initiatives, discount tickets and other offerings in an effort to persuade San Antonio and Bexar County leaders and voters to support public funding for the facility.
Sure, that’s a choice. It almost certainly doesn’t help that Holt was very specific about the $500 million share he proposes to cover — plus cost overruns, though what constitutes a cost overrun on an arena with no established projected cost is an interesting epistemological question — but much more handwavy about where the public money would come from: He wants $500 million in business tax and hotel tax revenue from the city, plus an undetermined amount of money from Bexar County, perhaps $175 million of which would come from a 0.25% hike in hotel and rental car taxes set to go before voters this November. Journalism shuns a hard-number vacuum, so “Spurs owner offers $500m toward arena” works better as a headline than “Spurs owner asking taxpayers for unknown hundreds of millions toward arena,” even before considering that the former is what was boldfaced in Holt’s open letter, anything in boldface must be important and true, that’s just how it works, right?
News4SanAntonio did a slightly better job of laying out the relative costs, with a pie chart showing $500 million coming from Holt, $500 million from the city, and $200 million from the county — though the reporter then undercut that by pointing to each section of the pie and saying “this doesn’t come from your tax money, this doesn’t come from your tax money, this doesn’t come from your tax money,” which is a funny way of describing a chart where two of the sections are literally tax money. The argument is presumably that because it’s only “tourists” who pay hotel and car rental taxes (not really, but let’s go with it), this is free money — but regardless it’s money the city and county could raise to spend on anything other than a new toy for the local NBA owner, so it’s still a net loss.
There’s still a ways to go on the proposed Spurs arena deal, including that November vote to authorize county tax hikes, and San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones is already making noise about asking Holt to kick in more from naming rights, merchandise, ticket, and concession sales, especially since the city is projecting a $220 million budget deficit by 2030. Still, this is a “transformative” plan called “Project Marvel,” who can say no to that, everyone loves things called “Marvel,” right? Oh, hmm, maybe Holt should rebrand this as Project Cinephile.
You know, we get a lot of stick from some of you humans about the whole flying in and using our anti grav beam to bring you aboard, then putting you in long term cold storage for the long flight home until you can be used as food.
But this sort of thing just makes us shake our heads (those of us that can shake our heads – some don’t have the kind of neck mobility needed and have to completely turn around, which isn’t the same effect really is it?).
You say it is wrong to use humans as food, but you do it to other species. And you leave some of your own people – more and more every day it seems – to live on the street and dumpster dive while funnelling billions to people who are already rich.
We don’t think of you as being all that developed as a species.
Can you blame us?