No projections for you!
The Mayor’s Office has provided a one-page financial projection showing year-by-year tax revenues that will be captured for the new $2.1 billion stadium. They refuse to provide any year-by-year projections about how that tax money will be spent.
In response to Council questions about the Term Sheet, in late November, the Mayor’s Office provided what they call a “preliminary” projection of public tax revenues that will be captured to pay for both stadium construction and future improvements in the decades to come. The one-pager is “Exhibit B” at the end of this Q&A document. The quick takeaway is that the tax revenue captured for the new stadium over 30 years is approximately $2.9 billion.
Typically, projections should walk a reader through both the expected sources of funds and the expected uses of funds. The one-pager from the Mayor’s Office does not include any information about the expected uses of funds through the life of the bonds. That means we don’t know what to expect in terms of bond payments and we don’t know how much public tax money will be captured in two funds described in the Term Sheet — a capital repairs reserve fund and a surplus fund.
This is not a trivial issue. There are major tax dollars implicated. The Mayor’s Office told the East Bank Stadium Committee in late October that the capital repairs reserve fund alone will be “hundreds of millions” of dollars. That’s the only information we have about the amount of tax dollars that will be corralled into these reserve and surplus funds.
On November 29, I started asking the administration to see their projections about how these billions in tax revenues will be spent. The Mayor’s Office has refused to provide anything. They won’t provide that information for consideration of the Term Sheet. You can read the emails here for yourself. My last comment to the Mayor’s Office about not providing the uses analysis was:
“It is not acceptable for the administration to seek approval of a $2.1 billion Term Sheet without providing any projections to the Council about the expected uses of public revenue streams, including the amount of bond payments, excess revenue funds, Capital Repair Reserve Fund, and surplus fund.”
This is basic stuff. The administration is asking the Council to approve a Term Sheet to build a $2.1 billion stadium. The Mayor’s Office is willing to give us a “preliminary” analysis about the sources of tax revenue that shows $2.9 billion collected over 30 years. But they won’t provide any information showing how that $2.9 billion of public tax revenue will be spent? I know lots of folks want a new stadium, but it is truly outrageous to stiff arm the Council and public on this.
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For more information about the stadium proposal, I have collected links to the East Bank Stadium Committee web page and all of my posts about the stadium here.