Quote:
Originally Posted by Enoch Root
Function normally means that some kind of tax or ticket tax was used to fund the facility, and then the use of the facility paid it back. Pretty straight-forward.
As I have said several times, there is an arena and/or stadium in virtually every city. The vast majority are (at least partially) funded with public money. In many, if not most of those cases, there is some form of ongoing tax to cover the costs.
Again, in most cases, they work fine. Some quick examples of cities where there was either a ticket tax, or a sales tax, or a hotel tax, or whatever, that did its job so to speak includes: Cleveland, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Tampa, Nashville, St Paul, Arlington, to name a few, and there are many others.
This discussion was about the viability of a ticket tax and the riskiness of its ability to to meet the payments of the debt service.
No one has made any argument that might suggest the ticket tax would be risky or on shaky ground. The Flames aren't just one tenant, they are (at least) three. The viability of the primary tenant (the Flames) is hard to dispute.
That was the point, and moving the goalposts to disputes about whether a team should be paying rent or not, or another deal was poorly constructed because teams didn't have to pay rent unless they were profitable or whatever, does not change that.
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That's a fair point. An example would be Denver and Coors Field, which the Muni introduced a 2% sales tax to pay for the Field - I believe the stadium has been paid off, or is close to it.
But, I would still question whether I would want my city adding a tax like that for a baseball stadium. That is what i take issue with.
A benefit is the Flames have not discussed Personal Seat Licenses (PCL's) as those are a massive butt hurt for the fans and season ticket owners.