After the City of San Antonio and Bexar County voted to partially fund a new stadium for the Missions AA baseball team, I asked a local conservative activist what she thought. “It’s guaranteed to get done. What is the” most we can get for “small businesses and the community in exchange,” she said.
This and the multi-billion dollar ‘Project Marvel’ sports and entertainment district (to include a new arena for the NBA’s Spurs and a revamped Alamodome) were the topics of discussion on a recent San Antonio Express-News’ ENside Politics podcast featuring Father Jimmy Drennan and Sonia Rodriguez.
They represent a non-partisan group called COPS-Metro, which works to “improve life for families in the San Antonio region” by giving “ordinary people a powerful voice in the decisions that affect their communities.”
They sounded none too impressed with the way these proposed downtown projects have been handled, particularly the lack of transparency.
Father Drennan was most animated about the fact that very little development has occurred around the stadiums we do have (the Spurs’ Frost Bank Center, the Missions’ Nelson Wolfe Municipal Stadium, and the sporadically-utilized Alamodome).
The promises that they would produce an “economic boom” have “never ever been brought to fruition. The lives of the citizens” have not changed “in any real way.” The activist mentioned these same “empty promises.”
“That’s part of why we’re still such a poor city,” Ms. Rodriguez added.
Officials should know better.
Stadiums house consumer goods and services. After the play-clock expires, or the last encore has played, that’s it until the next game or concert, whenever that is. Can these venues stimulate other economic activity? Sure, but it’s not the sustained kind.
That’s produced by manufacturing, an actual, organic “economic multiplier.”
Later in the discussion however, Father Drennan undercut his own history lesson.
COPS-Metro managed to get $2,500 for “rental relocation” assistance for residents of the Soap Factory, an apartment complex that would have to be razed to make room for the Missions stadium. “That is nothing,” he said, compared to “the kind of money that’s going to be generated in this area.”
Do he and others subconsciously believe that kind of “boom” is still possible, despite the lack of faith that they seem to have in leadership (“I never trust the city when they say ‘it’s not gonna cost y’all a penny’” Ms. Rodriguez said, dripping with cynicism)?
So, we’re back to securing some “deliverables,” as the activist put it.
Whatever public funding goes toward the Missions stadium would reportedly come from property tax revenue thrown off by the hoped-for development in the surrounding area that Father Drennan indicated.
He pointed to a laundry list of items that those “tax dollars … could be going to fund: street repairs, park repairs, improving our neighborhoods, economic development of our people.” Instead, “it’s going to pay off the stadium.”
One can’t help but wonder if politicians and bureaucrats prefer the process to play out this way.
Is it less of an impediment for them to simply get buy-in with pay-offs for requests like these? Would it be less of a headache than greater transparency, when more groups might demand a seat at the table?
This is akin to logrolling. ‘I’ll support your measure if you support mine.’ It’s how municipalities like ours dig past $18 billion in debt, increasing the burden on the property taxpayer. It’s why some get so fed-up that they move outside city limits, subsequently increasing the tax bill even more for those who remain.
Unless this cycle is broken, the next stop for the city is going hat-in-hand to Uncle Sam for a bailout. Given the current budget-tightening mood sweeping through D.C. though, that visit might not go so well.
