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

-=0=-