Friday, February 25, 2011

49ers' Stadium Subsidy: Common Sense gets Sacked.

Dear Santa Clarans,


On Wednesday, Tom Barnidge of the Contra Costa Times did an excellent job of covering the RDA extension which passed First Reading by our City Council on Tuesday evening:

Common sense takes a beating with redevelopment funding

"...So maybe this is not a simple yea-or-nay issue. Maybe cutbacks and reforms can reinvent redevelopment. But there's no way California should give $40 million to the 49ers."

Schools? Or stadium subsidies? As a city, we can't have lost that much perspective on this one issue.

Common sense got sacked like Alex Smith this last Tuesday evening - and so did a promise our Council made to us much earlier.



Best regards,
Bill Bailey, Treasurer,
Santa Clara Plays Fair

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Wednesday, February 23, 2011

49ers Stadium Subsidy - and a Broken Promise.

Dear Santa Clarans,


Last night, City Council voted to accept the First Reading of the RDA Extension. By doing that, they confirmed that they were breaking a promise that they made to all Santa Clarans four years ago.

Back in January of 2007, Council was very clear. They approved, unanimously, the Guiding Principles for the 49ers' stadium subsidy. The very first one was a pledge to us that the stadium subsidy was not going to impact our General Fund, directly or indirectly. See page 4/4, Guiding Principle "1."

Yet, last night, Council voted to bleed $20,000,000 out of our city's General Fund over the new RDA lifetime. Click the little icon here, and see page 15/15.

Note the "($19.5)" (MILLION) in the lower half of the table after "City of Santa Clara." That is what our General Fund loses, and those are real dollars.

But this isn't news to anyone, is it? We saw this same table on the evening of June 2, 2009, when the Term Sheet was presented - but only at that meeting, and after the news cameras were switched off. The General Fund ripoff was quietly buried.

Santa Clarans, we are not getting the whole story on the $444M 49ers' Stadium Subsidy, and certainly not on what it is really going to cost us as a city.

We may want to prepare ourselves for even more broken promises.

The Public Hearing on this SB 211 amendment, or RDA Extension, will be held on Tuesday evening, March 15th, in Chambers at 7:00 pm.

Can you make it?


Thanks for all of your support,
Bill Bailey, Treasurer
Santa Clara Plays Fair

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