Quote:
Originally Posted by Resolute 14
Not sure when I personally relied on the "prestige" argument, but no biggie. As far as "development" goes, I'm not going to go dino7c about it, but at the same time, the land has been an underutilized eyesore for over half a century now. If this proposal kickstarts cleanup and development of the area, then that is a win for the city.
But my point in response to HotHotHeat (and to others on this front) is to point out that people in opposition are relying on assumptions to spin the costs to the city in the worst possible light. We all know the Flames would love to have the city front those costs - there are some interesting and potentially good reasons for that in addition to the purely selfish ones - but it is disingenuous to just assume that will be the case when King did state outright that conventional funding is an option. So stop pretending there is only one direction that particular aspect of the funding can go.
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I don't think people do. It was very clear to me that the particular funding slide was trying to spin it such that it shows that the ticket tax is somehow funded by the users of the facility - making it far more palpable to the general public than just "City of Calgary - to be repaid with Ticket Levy".
Same with the CRL portion. Much better to say that the developers of the community will pay for it, rather than "City of Calgary - to be repaid with CRL". And even then, it's very clear that the public's understanding of what CRL actually is is really shoddy.
Then you have all the people that believe a "city asset" is a good thing. It's an AWFUL thing for an asset like this. Imagine possible repairs, possible liabilities. These massive facilities generally only break even (the saddledome earned 1.5M in 2010, for example), and are generally worthless upon their decommissioning.
Basically, I suspect that you understand the implications, but don't be so quick to assume the general public does.
I also understand that the presentation was a starting point for negotiations, but it was actually quite insulting to me that they would open with such a lowball.