Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Candidates' Forum on 9/20: Part 2 - We used to call it "Fiscal Responsibility"

In the first part of this post, I acknowledged the difficult job of bringing our city's expenses into line with what's clearly a time of troubled revenue intake.

That said: There can be no talk of “fiscal responsibility” in our city without a clear and open discussion of the damage which will be done by the 49ers’ stadium subsidy.

Contrary to the statements by Seat 5 candidate and current Mayor Mahan: The issuance of stadium bonds by our Redevelopment Agency WILL cause a loss of RDA remittances to our City’s General Fund – also, in fact, a violation of the single most important Guiding Principle of January 9th, 2007.

This loss was duly calculated at $67 million by City Staff for the Term Sheet presentation of June 2, 2009 - and the Staff presentation containing that analysis was accepted on a 5-2 vote by Mayor Mahan and the other four Stadium Boosters on the Council.

Please note: The current estimations of our city's General Fund deficits don't even include the losses due to these diversions of RDA money.

In sum: A “deal” with the San Francisco 49ers which fails to yield even minuscule returns to the General Fund, but which in fact causes it to lose money, is simply no deal at all.

That’s why it was most distressing to hear from Seat 2 candidate Kolstad that the passage of Measure J on June 8th trumps all – implying clearly that Santa Clarans are not allowed to demand a better deal than the poor one offered by Measure J! This should be disturbing to all of us: First, the Stadium Boosters paste the flawed, non-binding Term Sheet onto Measure J - and they then tell us that we’re not allowed to fix what’s clearly wrong with it.

It was therefore gratifying to hear from Seat 5 candidate O’Neill a public acknowledgment of the $330 million public contribution from the yet-to-be-formed Santa Clara Stadium Authority. However, there won’t be full public disclosure of those construction money sources – or of the operating costs to be borne by that joint-powers authority – until motivated Councilmembers demand the immediate cancellation of the Confidentiality Agreement of April, 2007.

It’s been three-and-a-half years. It's long past time to tell Santa Clarans the whole truth about the Stadium Authority - and the true effects of the 49ers' stadium subsidy on our city's fiscal health.

Whether or not our votes on November 2 will change the status quo simply isn't clear. But each of us are entitled to ask the candidates where they stand on all of our city's fiscal issues - not just on some of them.


Next: 'Tell me about those tax incentives.'


Thanks for your support and best regards,

Bill Bailey, Treasurer,

Santa Clara Plays Fair

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