Rays stadium votes pushed back to May, as questions grow about sales tax surcharge

“Time is of the essence,” Hagan said.

Part of the holdup is that there’s nothing yet to actually vote on: Zalupski, the city, and the county are still hashing out a term sheet that will determine who will pay for what, as well as presumably the Rays’ lease terms on the sprawling 130-acre development site. (The cost of providing rent- and property-tax-free land to the project has previously been estimated at between $1.1 billion and $2.5 billion, on top of the public’s share of construction costs.) But questions also remain about using a 0.5% sales tax surcharge called the Community Investment Tax to provide $437 million toward the stadium, given that the 2024 ballot measure that approved the tax hike required it to be used for “infrastructure for transportation and public works, public safety, public facilities, public utilities and public schools,” none of which exactly describes a privately controlled sports stadium. (The previous version of the CIT, passed by voters in 1996, specifically allowed for use on “a community stadium,” which ended up being the Buccaneers‘ new home.)

The CIT is also limited in a couple of ways in how much money it can raise, as Tampa Bay Times columnist John Hill noted yesterday: It only runs for 15 years, and it is capped at committing 70% of future revenues to paying off any bonds. That’s not going to hamstring any stadium spending by itself — the tax brings in around $200 million a year, way more than enough to pay off $437 million in bonds — but it does leave Zalupski angling for a decent-sized cut of a pool of money that also has to pay for roads, bridges, sidewalks, fire services, sewers, and so on. The county previously identified $2.6 billion worth of those projects to be funded by the CIT, which (depending on interest rates and how fast tax receipts increase) could well eat up all the available funds, meaning diverting CIT dollars to a stadium would require cutting back on actual public infrastructure.

Given all this, waiting until early May — or even late May — to vote so that city and county officials can know what the hell they’re voting on is pretty reasonable due diligence. But in a world where team owners and their elected official friends often see taking time to talk about stadium funding before voting on it to be unacceptable, it’s noteworthy that the Tampa city council and Hillsborough County Commission seem to be eager to take their time. Next week’s public workshop and hearing will be interesting not just to see what the Rays reveal about their stadium dreams, but to find what sort of questions councilmembers and commissioners ask, and what those say about their willingness to rubber-stamp what would be one of the biggest sports project subsidies in history.