49ers' Stadium Subsidies: "Let's go on a spree with the city's credit cards!"

Dear Santa Clarans,

We're already getting some diversionary spin on the outlandish debt which five City Councilmembers and the 49ers want to pile on the Santa Clara Stadium Authority.  Let's look at two of them, one unimportant, but the other one vital to the fiscal health of our city.

The first bit attributes to our group some imagined false focus on the increase in the total construction costs of the 49ers' stadium.  Well, yeah, it has increased from $937,000,000 to $1,020,000,000 (That's $1.02 BILLION).  That's an unadjusted increase of about 9%, but (maybe) 2-4% in "June, 2010 Dollars".

For us, that's not the real story.

The real story is that second bit of pap:  The utterly false claim that the 49ers and the NFL are somehow contributing "revenues" for the stadium.  They are not.  They are instead heaping an additional $520,000,000 worth of loans onto the $330,000,000 already down to the Santa Clara Stadium Authority.

That's public debt, and it's public money.

This should never have happened.   But there is a hard number of true out-of-pocket 49ers' contribution that the team, the NFL and their financiers can't hide:  The 49ers sent us to the polls last June with their own bought-and-paid for 'citizens' initiative.'  At the time, they "estimated" that they would be contributing $493 million toward a one-billion-dollar stadium.

Eighteen months later, our "business partner" now wants to pay only $152 million - and they want a Santa Clara Agency to service $850,000,000 in debt for a stadium that only benefits the team and the NFL.

You're entitled to ask the question:  Why are the 49ers now paying only a mere 15% of the total costs of their stadium?

Why are they not paying the 53% they told us when we went to the polls last June?

Santa Clara Plays Fair urges our City Council to take this DDA back to the drawing board.  The 49ers should at least be paying for their own stadium themselves, if they insist upon grabbing up all of the NFL Revenues.

They also owe Santa Clara MUCH more in Fixed Rent payments to the City's General Fund - a miserable $180 THOUSAND in the first year is unacceptable.  

Finally, they should most certainly be turning exclusive control of the Second Team Sublease over to our own Stadium Authority.  They shouldn't be calling the shots on the Second Team - we should be.

The five 49ers' Stadium Boosters on our City Council are letting the San Francisco 49ers go on a spree with Santa Clara's credit cards.   That's simply not the answer - not for our city, and not for Santa Clarans.

Please:  Come to City Council Chambers this Tuesday evening, December 13, at 7:00 pm - and speak out against the outrageous stadium subsidy.

Demand more from the San Francisco 49ers.

Thanks for all of your support,
Bill Bailey, Treasurer


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