The Hillsborough County Commission has a hearing today on the proposed Tampa Bay Rays stadium, and while this won’t be the final vote on the project — those are a couple of weeks away at least — it could involve one of the most important ones. That’s because one commissioner, Gwen Myers, is introducing a motion to ask the county attorney’s office if $467 million from the county’s 0.5% sales tax surcharge can be used toward the stadium, despite promises when it was passed that it would not be:
Voters approved extending the tax, which renews in December 2026 and runs into 2041, by a narrow margin after most of the current commissioners said it should be off-limits to new sports stadiums.
Commissioner Ken Hagan, who first introduced the tax as a potential funding source in February through a framework document prepared by his office, has said talks would fail without it.
“This agreement does not happen without the (tax),” he said. “It just doesn’t.”
(That’d be Ken Hagan, seen here in one of the totally impartial images on his reelection website.)
[Ed. note: It looks like Hagan actually made the “agreement does not happen without” the tax comment back in February, though the TB Times didn’t mention that in its report this week. Thanks to the Facebook commenter who pointed this out.)
At least three of the seven commission members — Myers, Joshua Wostal, and Chris Boles, all of whom argued in the run-up to the sales tax referendum that it couldn’t be used for stadiums — have raised questions about using Community Investment Tax money for the Rays, meaning this thing has a chance of passage if it can muster just one more vote. At that point, it would be up to the county attorney to determine not so much whether the county commissioners can call a backsies — it doesn’t appear from here like their comments during the 2024 ballot measure were legally binding — as whether the referendum language that the money could be used to “fund infrastructure for transportation and public works, public safety, public facilities, public utilities and public schools” would allow for a publicly owned, but privately used, baseball stadium.
Over on the Tampa city side, meanwhile, city council chair Alan Clendenin says there are still a pile of t’s to be crossed and i’s to be dotted in the rest of the deal as well:
Clendenin, who is a member of the Tampa Sports Authority, said at the agency’s meeting Tuesday that “it’s not even put to pencil at this point.” The city and county have forecast possible votes on an agreement April 15 and 16, respectively.
“It’s still all in flux. They’re still negotiating everything,” Clendenin said. “There’s still some very consequential items to be resolved.”
Clendenin didn’t go into detail about everything that’s still up in the air, but did say “we’re probably 80% there.” One item the council is still waiting on is an economic impact analysis due later this week from AECOM, an engineering consultant that has a pretty bad record on projecting economic impact — including being asked to determine the annual impact of a Buffalo Bills stadium and just adding up all the money spent on Bills games currently, even though none of that would be new if the team moved across the street, and not all of it would be lost if the team moved away and locals spent their entertainment dollars on something else. But the council is going to at least wait for their clown document before voting to fund a stadium, so yay due diligence or something?
Clendenin also said the city is waiting to see if the state legislature will approve state money for transportation work around the stadium. And both the subhead and the photo caption on Colleen Wright’s story in the Tampa Bay Times say that there are questions whether an upcoming vote on a memorandum of understanding with the team would be legally binding or not, though it looks like this information was cut from the story itself, hey, Tampa Bay Times, you know it doesn’t cost more to run more words on the internet, right?
Add it all up, and Rays owner Patrick Zalupski still has a bunch more hurdles to get past before he can tap $2.25 billion in public subsidies for a new $2.3 billion stadium on the site of a public community college campus. Which, put that way, he absolutely should have to, but “elected officials want to think for a minute before approving billions of dollars for billionaire” is genuine news these days, sorry for the universe we live in.
I’d like to write a contract that contained no “T’s” and no lower case “i” then I could rebuke anyone who used that phrase.
A Voyd
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Void
You’re right, though, we really need to update that phrase with a more modern metaphor, like “still have to ask ChatGPT to make the contract more ‘contracty.\'”
Of course they’re going to get state money. The owner is a crony of the governor.