49ers' Stadium Subsidies: The 49ers get Cafeteria-style financing from Santa Clara

Dear Santa Clarans,



From Friday evening, you were given 96 hours to review the 421-page Draft DDA on the City's website.  We've gone through it as thoroughly as we can.  It's complex, but an analogy might help clear the air about what it really means:


You've engaged a partner to help build a new home.  Your business partner controls nearly all of the negotiations with the architect and the General Contractor, so your partner's design demands come first.


You also thought that you and your partner were going roughly "halves" on the total construction cost of $937,000.00, with $444,000 down to you and $493,000 down to your partner.


You now learn that the cost to build is now a million and change.


Worse, at the eleventh hour, your partner is shoving much more of his cost onto your $444,000 line of credit.  He has the unmitigated gall to tell you that, since he doesn't drive, and because he eats out and shaves at work, he isn't going to pay for the construction of the home's garage, kitchen or bathrooms.


So, after four years of dickering, your partner says that he's only liable for $152,000 of the cost of a $1,020,000 new home.  He expects you to pay the other $850,000 - and he still expects to take 30-minute showers, set the thermostat to 78 degrees and use your microwave oven and flat-panel TV.


Sound bad?  It gets worse:  Multiply the dollar amounts above by 1,000 and that is exactly what the San Francisco 49ers are doing to us right now.  What the 49ers are saying is, "We'll pay for the locker rooms and our Team Store - but we don't use the rest, so we're not going to pay for it."


We must have missed something.  The 49ers will take well over $130,000,000 out of that whole stadium every year - but they won't pay for the bleachers, seats or club lounges that paying fans will be using?  Consider the billions they will gross from a stadium we're paying for, and then ask yourself why the total net present value (NPV) of their payments over forty years into our city's General Fund remains at a mere $8 million.


What's even more pathetic than the lousy $8 million:  The five 49ers' Stadium Boosters on our elected City Council actually give every indication that they're going to agree to the 49ers' outlandish "cafeteria-style" financing - even though it's much worse than the 49ers' own Measure J from last June.


It should be clear now why the 49ers' "J" put no limit of any kind on Santa Clara Stadium Authority debt.


Santa Clarans, please demand more.  See the SCPF homepage for details on the Study Sessions this Tuesday and Thursday - and for contact information for Mayor Matthews and the City Council.  It is vital that you make your views on the massive stadium subsidy known.


Especially since that subsidy has more than doubled in eighteen months.


Not even Measure J justifies that.




Thanks for all of your support,
Bill Bailey, Treasurer


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