Quote:
Originally Posted by TopChed
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but the City has already committed to building a fieldhouse. If we are rolling that cost into the Olympic bid to have that matched, that seems like a win. Same with the "5000 seat arena" which I am assuming is funding earmarked for a Saddledome replacement. In that sense, the City is spending ~$400 million that they would have anyways, but by including it in the Olympic bid, we are getting additional funding from the provincial and federal governments.
If we assume that the games can be done close to the budget they've proposed, is that not a big win for Calgarians?
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The Olympics have a net operating loss of about 1 to 1.5 billion depending on which set of numbers you look at. So effectively the entire federal portion of the costs is going to running the games. 0 matching funds are going to infrastructure.
This is what I see as the ultimate failure of the bid. It fails to leverage federal dollars to build infrastructure for Calgary. Instead the province and city are paying for all the infrastructure whether it is required or not.
The provincial money really depends on what you will think happens in the next 8 years. If every response to infrastructure requests are met with you chose to spend the money on the Olympics then it is not new money and not a benefit of the Olympics. If you believe tha Calgary will continue to get its share of additional Capital dollars than it is a benefit to Calgary.