Sports Stadium public/private deals proven to benefit billionaires, burden cities and citizens.
OP-ED Citizen’s Voice
By Axel C. Ringe,
Tennessee Chapter Sierra Club
As you all know, Randy Boyd (UT president, etc.) wishes to build a baseball stadium for his minor league team next to the Old City in downtown Knoxville. He would like Knoxville to pay for at least part of it. The Knoxville and Knox County mayors appear to be pushing hard for the scheme.
Apart from the environmental, social justice, congestion, and other reasons why this is not a good idea, the economics of such a venture means that probably the taxpayers of Knoxville and Knox County would foot the bill, while Randy pockets the profits – if any.
I understand there are some local organizations mobilizing to stop this fiasco. If you know of any such, please pass along this information. I intend to also send these links to our elected officials, with the hope the information might make them stop and think before committing public funds for private profit.
Take a moment to review the following links to articles of information that examined the economics and describe the fallout and aftermath of other cities where public financing for sports stadiums has been done and failed. The bottom line was a high cost to the municipalities and profits to billionaires.
- www.brookings.edu/articles/sports-jobs-taxes-are-new-stadiums-worth-the-cost/
- www.econreview.berkeley.edu/the-economics-of-sports-stadiums-does-public-financing-of-sports-stadiums-create-local-economic-growth-or-just-help-billionaires-improve-their-profit-margin/
- www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/11/sports-stadiums-can-be-bad-cities/576334
- www.johnlocke.org/policy-position/publicly-funded-stadiums/
- www.cato.org/blog/pandemic-makes-municipal-stadiums-even-worse-deal-taxpayers-0
With this information, the City and County of Knoxville should not be considering what is proven to be a costly failure.
I understand there are some local organizations already mobilizing to stop this fiasco. If you know of any such, please pass along this information. I intend to also send these links to our elected officials, with the hope the information might make them stop and think before committing public funds for private profit.
Axel C. Ringe is with the Tennessee Chapter Sierra Club. He can be reached by email; onyxfarm@bellsouth.net.
