Opponents of the Tempe deal disagree with it not costing taxpayer money.
https://kjzz.org/content/1844391/wha...-entertainment
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Lauren Kuby left the Tempe council last year. After serving two terms, she was familiar with the long negotiations with the Coyotes that resulted in next month’s propositions.
She says the team’s promise of private financing only goes so far.
“They’re maliciously misrepresenting the truth, shall we say. They’re saying it’s privately financed–they’re referring to the actual arena itself. But within and underneath the arena, you need all that infrastructure, right? And so, there are going to be taxes, hotel taxes, bed taxes, sales taxes going to pay for the infrastructure,” said Kuby.
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Kuby, Senior Global Futures Scientist at ASU, says that residents will also pay, in the form of tax breaks for the developers.
“City taxpayers, the public, are going to be responsible for $740 million. A big chunk of that is that once the buildings are built, then they have relief of property taxes for up to 30 years, so that’s $500 million in itself. The other $240 million is the infrastructure to build the district," said Kuby.
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The dollar figures given by the No side are similar to the what the Flames are getting.
It's possible that if Calgary was willing to sell all the vacant land in that area for cheap to a private developer, allow it to be developed as they see fit and gave them a share of incremental property tax revenue increases, that somebody would do the same thing as Tempe.