urbanSTL

I may be the "astute" critic who replied to Ray's tweet about the article. After Ray published a link to his original magazine article, (in which he said he could not reach the Task Force for review or comment), I asked how he squared his discovery with the application for tax credits submitted to the Missouri Development Finance Board at this link, in which the Task Force showed sources of the money that would get them to the $998 million without the $215 million Ray found.

http://www.stltoday.com/dome-authorithy ... 83e2b.html

I asked him to look at the front page and page D6. Ray then read the MDFB and found a place where the application said the city could choose to provide other incentives, which he assumed was the $215M. But he didn't explain why the Task Force would request that and end up with $1.23 billion when they only needed $998 million. And the naming rights money is on top of all that.

But if the Task Force really is asking for more from the city for some reason, I can see why. Look at D6. It shows the windfall the City, Great Rivers Greenway, and the St Louis school district are expected to receive from this. I hope they keep the City contribution to $6M per year to end all argument about payback. I'll be interested to see how final funding plays out. But I wish Ray would at least recognize that inflation exists when he does calculations to correctly compound expected inflation and show that the funding is not unreasonable. Then we could all get past the phony outrage and disinformation intended to make citizens think they will have a cool billion dollars to fight crime with if they could just stop the stadium. Read letters in today's Post to see what I mean.

Here are Rays three tweets to me merged together.

@rayhartmann: @ZGare @charlesjaco1 Just reporting what the city was asked for recently. Check out page D5 of the document you cited. It notes that "the city will ultimately decide...whether to provide other incentives that may be requested for the development...which this analysis does not take into account." I think that's why "my" numbers (the city's) don't jive w/ appl.

If the Task Force wants the City to pay for 15% of the total cost of the stadium, it's not hard to see why $6M payments for 30 years isn't going to cut it.

From the STL Mag article: "Later in the day, Peacock suggested that the information presented to the city was out of date, and that in any event it was nothing new. He told KMOX that it had always been anticipated that the city would provide 15 percent of the funding for the new stadium and that this was the way it would reach a $150 million commitment."

I take it by that quote, Peacock doesn't mean the City is responsible for 15% of the public funding for the stadium. He means 15% of the $1B stadium cost. So the City is going to be responsible for paying back a principal of $150 million in bonds. There is going to be a sh*t ton of interest due on that $150M in bonds, especially bc of the City's not too great credit rating. Like the article says, $6M annual payments for 30 years is only going to get you about $69M on the original principal, because the rest is interest. Interest on the bond payments alone is going to put you easily at an additional $200M over the life of the bond.

Simply raising gameday experience tax rates out the wazoo to come up with that additional $200M+ for the interest doesn't make this a good deal for the city. It just taxes the wazoo out of Rams fans to support an industry that generates no positive economic externalities to the region.

In what was little more than a formality, the State of Missouri just approved $43 million in Brownfield Tax Credits for the new stadium. For whatever it's worth, in their initial financing outline, the task force was counting on only "$25-30 million" in BTCs, so they actually wound up with $13-18 million more than they expected.

The funding outline in the state tax credit application at the link in my post above only tags the city for $66M and gets the rest of the $998M from all non-city sources, which do not include anything for the county portion. So I always assumed the 15% meant 15% of total funding including financing, or the $6M * 30 = $180M. So if the $66M from their application has grown to $150M or 15% of the cash up front, then what portion went down from their application? Are they not expecting the tax credit? Or hedging against state contribution? No other publication is talking about Ray's numbers, so I'm hoping he is just wrong as usual for Ray and any development project here. And I am all for using special taxing districts around the stadium to force Rams, Rams fans, and the NFL advertisers to pay for the stadium.

Since the County benefits from having the Rams training facility and the homes of many players, but is contributing nothing to the effort to keep those county tax payers, is there a clever way the City could do a shell game to pry some of the County free money away to support the effort to keep their Rams? How about a fee on airline tickets which would mainly hit county residents? There must be a way to get the County to pay a portion of its windfall in order to keep the windfall.

gary kreie wrote:Since the County benefits from having the Rams training facility and the homes of many players, but is contributing nothing to the effort to keep those county tax payers, is there a clever way the City could do a shell game to pry some of the County free money away to support the effort to keep their Rams? How about a fee on airline tickets which would mainly hit county residents? There must be a way to get the County to pay a portion of its windfall in order to keep the windfall.

Without an earnings tax, the county doesn't see nearly as much tax money from the Rams being HQed there as the city would if they were headquartered in the city.

If the city could get the Rams practice facility, suddenly this might make A LOT more sense.

^ I assume right now that would bring in around $1.5 - $2.0 million a year right now.

Glad to see Darlene supports $6M per year from the city.

To make up for the missing $6M from the County, what would be wrong with defining a special taxing district that exactly matches the boundaries of the new stadium, and adding a tax of of about $2 average on food and beer, and $8 average per ticket? For 10 games per year plus other events, that should raise the missing $6M per year primarily from County residents who make up most of the attendees. Des Peres did something similar with a special sales tax just on sales inside West County Center at the request of the Center. By doing it as a tax instead of just an entrance fee, I think it may have federal tax advantages or something. Or maybe it is just the most efficient way to collect the fees since they collect regular city and state taxes anyway.

Sticking it to the public that had the audacity to vote against blowing millions on stadiums? Couple hundred million.

Rams fans dreaming up ways they could pull out a win against a real football franchise? Priceless.

We're trying to find a way to stick it to the portion of the public that attends Rams games -- especially since most of them live in the County, and the County won't contribut to keeping the Rams, even though the training facility is in the County, and most players probably live there. The City has done a good job of maintaining its leadership role in providing facilities and servcies that serve the entire region. I'd like to see the City continue in that role, but when outlying freeloaders, like the County, take advantage of them, we have to get creative to find ways to pry money from folks outside the city to get them to support regional projects.

gary kreie wrote:We're trying to find a way to stick it to the portion of the public that attends Rams games -- especially since most of them live in the County, and the County won't contribut to keeping the Rams, even though the training facility is in the County, and most players probably live there. The City has done a good job of maintaining its leadership role in providing facilities and servcies that serve the entire region. I'd like to see the City continue in that role, but when outlying freeloaders, like the County, take advantage of them, we have to get creative to find ways to pry money from folks outside the city to get them to support regional projects.

Well said sir.

"Freeloaders" may be a bit harsh, but Gary's point isn't invalid. I suspect the majority of people that think St. Louis MUST keep the Rams reside in the county.

And indeed the city would be paying the debt to provide them their entertainment.

In fact, the majority of the people pushing the idea that the city needs to bring these people downtown 8 times a year reside in the county as well.

(Note: I'd like to keep the team. I'd like to have the stadium. And I greatly prefer teams to be centrally located in downtown where possible. So my beefs only go so far. I just think there's some validity the idea that the county residents are pushing hard for this to happen and yet not making any public contribution to it.)

^The County Rams fans will be counted on to buy the value-less PSLs, if that counts for anything

roger wyoming II wrote:I think it is important to remember that Nixon/Peacock kicked the County out of potential stadium funding back in March.... the irony is that if they hadn't done that we very well could have had stadium funding all tidied up at the same $6 million each and awaiting a public vote next month.

Per Stenger, County participation in the new stadium sans public vote was a non-starter, hence the County being kicked out of the potential funding back in March.

Nixon/Peacock didn't remove the County from the equation for the new stadium for kicks and giggles, you know.