Why the Rays' Case for Public Dollars Just Keeps Getting Harder & Harder

This coming Monday and Tuesday, the public will have its first opportunity to see - and voice opinions - on the just-released $81M spring training stadium deal Dunedin city officials negotiated behind-closed-doors with the Blue Jays.

My quick takeaways: 1) It's never a good idea for small towns to go it alone against a pro sports team, much-better equipped for high-stakes negotiations;   2) It's hardly a done deal, since the biggest piece of the proposed funding won't come from the Dunedin officials who negotiated the pact, but from Pinellas County's bed tax...and we know from the Braves' short-lived Pinellas flirting that the Rays' future comes before Spring Training's.

But there are other threats to potential stadium funding revenues that have emerged in recent weeks.  Actually, those threats have always been there, as this blog has long pointed out potential stadium dollars could go fund a lot of other community needs.

St. Petersburg
In St. Petersburg, where Mayor Rick Kriseman has suggested no taxes would need to be raised to build a new baseball stadium on the site of the current baseball stadium...there's a pesky, stinky little problem that may need city dollars a little more urgently...the city's overflowing sewer system.

The Times' wrote this week that the city has a whole bunch of extra cash now that the Trop's construction bonds are finally paid off...but the need to spend that money on things like sewer fixes may bump the priority of a new MLB stadium down to No. 2 (see what I did there?).

Ironically, it's the most conservative member of St. Pete's City Council, Ed Montanari, who expressed the most concern about committing tax dollars to something other than a stadium right now.

Tampa
And it's an even more dire situation for stadium proponents in Tampa, where this summer, the county commission chose to address its shortfall in transportation funding not with a new sales tax, but by earmarking future property tax growth for roads and transit.

And that means any potential Community Redevelopment Area (CRA) created to capture Tax-Incremental Financing (TIF) around a new stadium now means much of the stadium infrastructure money will come directly from transportation infrastructure money.

The Biggest Threat:

Still no collaboration between Hillsborough & Pinellas counties on keeping the #Rays in #TampaBay: https://t.co/Drey4Vvia2 #SportsBiz

— Shadow of Stadium (@StadiumShadow) September 22, 2016

---

Get Shadow of the Stadium delivered straight to your inbox

FOLLOW: Shadow of the Stadium on Twitter
FOLLOW: Shadow of the Stadium on Facebook