As I understand it, it made financial sense according to professional people who looked at it. I think it would be fairly easy to get the same kind of support for the Blazers. Likely more support.
Having the team is a huge win for the city and state. Having the development that this investment group is clearly going to want is also going to be a huge win for this city, and thereby the state.
It doesn't make any sense not to support it. You're going to lose more money by losing the Blazers than it would ever cost you to do what it takes to keep them. And you're likely going to make more money from increased economic activity with a well thought out development than you'll contribute to the construction (especially if you're smart).
It's just not even worth considering letting them get away.
that's not what I was saying. That supposed 'support' you used as proof of intent in the form of a bond authorization appears to fit into the '
talk is cheap' category; or
cart before the horse. Can you tell me if any bonds have been issued since this authorization was granted? Will the city start the construction of the stadium before it is awarded a team? Are there any plans approved for construction? Any designs at all?
besides that, the authorization seem to implicitly say there would no be general taxes levied to pay the bonds; that's why it passed the legislature so easily. Rather the cost would be born by taxes on players and staff. So then, let me riff a little bit here, say the interest rate on the bonds is around 4%. For 800M in bonds, the annual debt service would be 32M. The goal would be to pay off the bonds over a 20-30 year period. At a 25 year schedule for bond retirement, that would be another 32M/year
so, 64M year. The average MLB payroll is around 170M. So, say the total staff payroll is 30M, and that's probably way high. That would mean there's a taxable base of around 200M to allegedly support the bond authorization. That 200M income base is supposed to cover 64M year in financing. That's a tax rate of over 30% and that comes after being taxed at the federal and state level. Not only that, the average player payroll of 172M is not all Oregon taxable; only half of it is. So those numbers are all off. Probably only have a taxable base of 100-120M....to pay 64M/year in debt service. LOL...not happening
I'd suspect that in the talk-is-cheap category, the legislature just threw this out because they knew it was easy pie-in-the-sky PR. Meanwhile, the City and state would have a fiduciary duty to have a finance plan in place and the one prescribed by the legislation is horse shit. That article even talked about the 'economic denialism' inherent in the bill. In other words, the notion that this won't be financed by general revenue is nuts. Further, the notion that finding real money is as easy as finding the play money in this bill is even more nuts
I was living in Juneau Alaska in the early 80's. In the late 70's there had been a big push by the state to move the capital from Juneau to up near Anchorage. The legislature had voted to move a couple of time. And there had been a statewide ballot measure that voted overwhelmingly to move the capital. So everything was in place for the move. EXCEPT for one minor detail: how to pay for the 3B it would cost to move the capital to a new location. The legislature had a plan: higher sales taxes, AND the suspension of the annual dividend check issued to all Alaskans. So that had to be approved by ballot measure. And unsurprisingly, the same people who were gung-ho about moving the capital were not gung-ho about paying for it. The ballot measure failed and the capital is still Juneau, more than 40 years later
I don't know what is going to happen on this Arena issue. I do suspect that a renovation of the Moda won't satisfy the new owner. The location is still a bad one for monetizing the area and the renovation would be a major one and that would shut the Moda down for at least one season, maybe 2, and there's no suitable alternative venue. I'm inclined to think that the city would be ok with assuming some of the cost of a new arena. Maybe Dundon would finance the bulk of the cost, especially all the depreciable assets. But I also know that when the buck stops, a lot of time, nobody wants it to stop on their desk
