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Originally Posted by jammies
You're assembling a mighty straw man - nobody is claiming there isn't civic value to a major league sports franchise, the question is if that "civic value" is worth tens or hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, especially when there is little or no chance of that "civic value" disappearing without it.
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No I wasn't assembling a straw man, I was replying to posters who made an extreme (and inaccurate) claim. You however, are creating a straw man by attempting to impose parameters on this discussion that don't yet exist.
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Do you think the Flames will relocate if they don't get a new arena? If not, what exactly is the down-side of not subsidizing that arena? And not nebulous drawbacks like "not having a world-class facility" or "inability for the team to access new sources of revenue" that, frankly, shouldn't matter to the City when there are plenty of concrete problems that their money should be spent on first.
Speculate for me - what do you think will happen if the City flat-out refuses to give the Flames anything other than the requisite permits and redesign of the roads nearby? Mass revolts in the streets? Children going without soup for lunch? Giant alien motherships in the sky? Or, might the Flames be forced to finance the arena WITH BONDS ON A 25 YEAR TERM?!?!? The horror!
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Um, no.