Quote:
Originally Posted by Strange Brew
Thanks - I appreciate your perspective. The way I see it is that there is no reason for the City to borrow this money on behalf of the Flames (speaking strictly from the City's perspective) unless it is helpful in the negotiations. It should lower the cost to the Flames. So the question is what is it worth to the Flames. Is that basically correct?
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I'm sure the flames will take cheaper money if they can get, and I'm not disagreeing with the other stuff you've been told, but there might be a couple other wrinkles.
1 is just procedural. I don't know the ins and outs but having the money as a city ticket tax might make it possible to apply that fee to to most number of uses - like how they can add airport departure fees to taxi bills.
2 - and this is maybe way bigger, is the revenue as a tax means it's not HRR. A poster mentioned this a while back (which I could remember the name to give them credit). If the flames borrow money and just add $10 to a ticket to pay it off, half of that goes to the players. As a tax it all goes straight to the $250m. The flames could pay the city a premium on the funds and still come out way ahead.
As others have said I'm sure this is all subject to negotiation, but I wouldn't assume the city loses by fronting money. It may even be an advantage.