[Roughneck]

Mayoral candidates weigh-in.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgar...301752?cmp=rss

Chabot

"It's one thing to say you want your cake and you want to eat it too, but you're asking us to spoon feed it to you," Chabot said.
"It would be an insult to Calgarians for us to foot that much of the bill without some sort of recovery from it whether that be through taxes or rent, or something."

Nenshi

"The proposal I read about this morning was a little bit news to me. It wasn't quite what we thought was on the table," Nenshi said.
Specifically, he took issue with what was being called "up-front" funding. Nenshi said a portion of what the Flames classified as the $275 million they had been willing to pony up consisted of a user fee or "ticket tax" of $150 million.
Nenshi said that $150 million would have been financed by the city.
"In their proposal they pay zero rent, zero property tax, and they get 100 per cent of all of the revenues from all sporting events, concerts and special events," Nenshi said.
"I'm not sure where that turns into a 50/50 partnership."

Smith

He said principally the deals compare different things, on one hand the Flames deal doesn't include the costs of upgrades to transit or the demolition of the Saddledome. But on the other the city deal didn't consider a CRL, Smith said.
Smith said he would support tax dollars going towards a stadium if the deal was akin to the one reached in Edmonton, where it lead to the development of an entire sports and entertainment district but he wasn't clear if either of these deals met that mark.