Posts Tagged stadium
Can Anyone Expect a Public Official to Notice?
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development, Politicians on April 3rd, 2010
April 3, 2010… Is there a Cleveland City Council member who can show any moxie when it comes to pursuing a bit of economic justice in this town? Nah. Too much to expect.
Public servants don’t seem to want to provide that service. Seeing justice is out of their line of sight.
Maybe it’s too much trouble too. Maybe they just don’t see the necessity. That happens a lot. They aren’t a very zealous crowd it seems. I don’t sense much passion there. More like bureaucratic. Short on compassion. Where’s Fanny Lewis?
Anyway there seems to be a dearth of people who even think in those 60ish terms any more. It’s a shame. We have lost so much of our passion about what’s wrong. Our city and culture reveal it.
The reason I’m bringing this up isn’t new. I’ve mentioned it before. Likely I’ll mention it again. And again. Probably AGAIN.
Here’s the deal: Billionaire Randy Lerner has a sweetheart contract. It was given to him by former Mayor Michael White and his favorite lawyer, Fred Nance of Squire Sanders & Dempsey. Quite a duo.
We continually pay dearly to see that the Lerner family does well. Since August of 2005, we county taxpayers have contributed $63,867,150.83 to help the City of Cleveland pay to build Browns stadium By the way, it is used about 10 dates a year.
That $63 million represents taxes we paid on cigarettes and various forms of alcohol as of the end of March. We also pay, but it isn’t recorded, 7.75 percent regular sales tax on the $63 million. That represents another nearly $500,000. This, folks, is real money.
Lerner, owner of the Cleveland Browns, pays almost no rent for a stadium built entirely by the taxpayers of Cleveland. A stadium, by the way, that pays no property taxes on the structure. He got the bargain $250,000 a year rent, never to rise. And the city gave the extra bargain of picking up the insurance costs of the stadium, thus the Browns.
As I’ve mentioned before, the city pays the property taxes on the land, which was provided by the city free of charge.
The city pays much more for the land property taxes than Lerner pays – or will ever pay – to rent the whole thing. The city pays more than $400,000 annually. Where can you get a deal like that? No where. Unless you’re very, very rich.
Do you think Mayor Frank Jackson would have the sense to tell Lerner – time to renegotiate the terms of the lease? You got a sweetheart deal, Mr. Lerner. Now, it’s time to pay a just price for use of the facility. Our city needs it. Our school children need it.
Jackson, of course, should have done this a long time ago. But he won’t. Makes too much sense.
Especially since the Browns have a training center in Berea. That means that though the Browns play all their games at the city’s stadium at really bargain prices, the wealthy Browns players only pay partial income (payroll) taxes in Cleveland. Berea gets to share the tax revenue.
You would think that Jeff Johnson or Brian Cummins – two of the more progressive Council members – would say, “Hey, the city’s getting taken. Time to renegotiation with the Browns. Let’s bring Lerner in here.”
Or maybe, Dona Brady or Matt Zone or Kevin Conwell or one of the new Council members.
Is there anyone awake at 60l Lakeside? Guess not.
Easier, I guess, to add bucks onto residents water bill for garbage pickup.
For more vile details: How Good It Gets for the Lerner Family
Overlooking the Obvious with Brent Larkin
Posted by Roldo Bartimole in Economic Development, Media on February 21st, 2010
February 21, 2010… How pathetic can you get? Brent Larkin, Sunday, uses quotes from four City Council members to tell us that Cleveland is in serious, serious trouble.
And as a center piece of the argument he uses the city’s $350 million mistake on the lake – Browns Stadium – to highlight somehow Cleveland’s problems.
As Mike Polensek points out it has no roof. Does he think with a roof it would be filled with activity? The city now has the right to use the stadium it pays for NINE times a year. Do you see it being used? No way.
Cleveland – with Brent Larkin, who actually wanted to be PD sports editor – and The Plain Dealer, paid close attention to sports in the last two decades. To the neglect of so much. Even now the sports pages are the largest section of the paper. And typically with fewer ads than other sections.
Dumbing down the dumb is tradition at the newspaper. It excels at it.
Anything the sports moguls wanted they got and get. Didn’t mean anything that some of what they got came from the Cleveland schools. Didn’t mean anything that other needs were pushed aside.
What was important to our leaders for decades was that the entertainment via sports, rock and roll and other venues got what they wanted. They got the money. We paid the price.
We still pay.
Brent has been the go-to guy in politics and civic life at the PD. He favored every one of these moves. Without reservation. With no discrimination as to value. Expressing no reservations with how it was done. No restraint on cost. Just do it!
Now he shouldn’t complain about results, or get others to do it for him.
Cleveland is what it is not because of the form of government – a city mayor and city legislative body.
These people don’t make the big decisions. They simply ratify what the business, corporate and foundation communities want.
Rarely does the public get involved. Usually the people are simply frozen out. But sometimes a tax is just too much for them. As with County Commissioner Vince Campanella’s desire to build a domed stadium with a property tax. That was the 1980s agenda. It got clobbered near two to one by voters. That ruined Campanella, a Republican, and his desire to be governor. But the game wasn’t over for the corporate leadership. Oh, no.
The usual suckers – voters – weren’t buying a property tax. That didn’t stop the Cleveland business establishment. Find another tax they’ll swallow. It took years – with Cleveland Tomorrow shifting its sights from the Cleveland economy to building sports facilities – to bring forth Gateway. Whoop-de-do.
A sales tax on booze and cigarettes. Hell, the little people pay that. Better than a property tax in the end.
We saved our sports teams. We lost our city.
Was that a great deal or what? Suburbanites get to drive into Cleveland, park at a tax subsidized garage, walk into a tax subsidized sports stadium or arena. But don’t get to drink the water.
Changing the form of government is meaningless unless you change the character of our civic and corporate culture.
And no one is even talking about doing that.