Today the BOCC held a workshop where county staff and the consultant who wrote the economic impact report would report to the commissioners.
Let’s cut to the chase: My impression is that despite several commissioners seeming very bullish on the idea of this project, we are still a long way from getting a stadium deal, and this calls into question the Rays determination to have a completed stadium in April 2029.
Over the past week we’ve seen several documents, some made public and others quietly revealed
to media outlets, so we knew what a Tampa Sports Authority commissioned economic impact assessment looked like, and elements of a Rays-drafted MOU.
Today’s meeting focused on the economic impact report and on county staff analysis of elements that could be part of a deal. An analyst from AECOM walked the commissioners through the economic impact analysis; frankly the main highlight for me was that, apparently, AECOM had changed a bunch of numbers and re-sent the report to commissioners last night. Since the new report wasn’t shared with the public, I can’t say what all changed, but it seems they re-thought some assumptions and also found a $1m revenue error that led to a slightly less optimistic analysis. I’m mostly stunned that these sorts of errors would happen, but I assume that AECOM was asked to produce this very quickly and when you give folks unrealistic timelines this may be the outcome.
The most informative testimony came from county staff. County administrator Bonnie Wise opened the meeting, and handed off to County Attorney Julia Mandel and deputies Greg Horwedel and Tom Fesler to get further in the weeds on potential funding sources and on issues that remain to be resolved. Mandel was mostly there to talk about legal limitations on the use of CIT (Community Investment Tax) funds, which remain contested.
The deputy administrators outlined a potential sources of county funding, making clear that they were not making recommendations but merely discussing options. In looking at funding options, the county has several guiding principles. They will do nothing to jeopardize the county’s AAA bond rating. They will only use county funds for items that have public value (for example, using disaster relief funds to address flooding issues that have arisen in that area in a way that helps surrounding neighborhoods). And finally they will not put taxpayer money at risk.
They raised a sobering point. While property and sales tax revenues have, in recent years, continually outpaced projections and generated surpluses in some accounts, these days of growth may be ending. Property tax assessments are flattening out; sales tax collections are not growing. A recent state law that exempted commercial leases from sales tax will tax a bite out of local budgets.
Most concerning to county officials: there are currently several proposals to either do away with or greatly reduce property taxes on owner-occupied homes. If this is your sort of topic, read about it here, but whether you love or hate the idea, all municipal governments have got to be wondering about spending commitments at a time when their tax collections may well take a huge hit.
Some interesting revelations emerged during commissioner questions. Or specifically, questions from commissioner Josh Wostal, the most consistent critic of this deal. This may be TMI for a baseball blog but I’ll disclose that my political preferences couldn’t possibly be farther away from Wostals’. So when I say that he was the only commissioner who seemed to grasp some of the loose ends here, I’m not saying that because I’m generally a Wostal fan.
First, he noted, there will be no property taxes on the stadium, but the public investment would in theory be justified because the larger mixed use development would pay property taxes — something like $900 million over 30 years (which, if you think about the size of the public investment, is actually not a lot). But that assumes that the team buys the land from Hillsborough College. If instead the team leases the land from the college, then the the land would be exempt from property tax. There would still be taxes on the buildings (in real estate speak, “verticalilty”) but those assessments would be a lot less than assessments on land plus buildings. We don’t yet know what the land deal with the college will look like, but leasing rather than buying the land would save the developers quite a bit of money, and reduce city and county benefits at the same time.
Wostal also noted that the list of outstanding items includes “verification of financial capacity of Rays ownership group.” In other words, the county has not yet vetted the ability of the Rays ownership group to meet their own financial obligations to this project. It’s concerning that the county is already spending hours of staff time coming up with a subsidy plan without first ascertaining that the owners actually have the capacity to hold up their end of the deal.
Why raise this? Wostal noted that he had supported a recent agreement to spend $250 million updating Benchmark Arena for the Lightning. There, the county had committed part of the hotel tax (officially Tourism Development Tax) dollars for renovations, using a “rebate” model which means the team does the upgrades and the county reimburses them using bonds backed by the TDT.
Wostal had suggested this approach for the Rays stadium. He claimed that the county could offer over $700 million using this model, although I don’t know where he got that figure, since the TDT already has a number of commitments. The Rays, however, did not want to go this this direction, and indeed they strongly prefer to structure a deal where public money comes in over the first 3 years. This leads Wostal — and us? —to wonder whether they have sufficiently deep pockets to carry out this project.
Commissioners Cepeda and Miller both raised worries about traffic to a potential stadium. Sigh. OF COURSE there is traffic any time you are trying to bring 20,000 to one location in a community that has almost NO ALTERNATIVES TO PRIVATE AUTOMOBILES. Traffic would be a problem if this were built in Ybor, or at the Fair Grounds.
Do you know how you avoid huge traffic jams around stadiums? You invest in trains and express buses so that you don’t have 10,000 cars all trying to make the same left turn at the same time.
Yet this commission and its predecessors have been hostile to all kinds of transit investments, from suing to prevent the implementation of a voter approved transportation focused sales tax, to putting forward legislation to dissolve the county transit agency altogether. I think we should start a new drinking game where we take a shot whenever a commissioner complains about traffic on the one hand and won’t consider investments in transit on the other hand.
Honestly, the “no to transit but no to traffic” hypocrisy also leads me to raise another contradictory political point. As we’ve mentioned previously, Governor Ron DeSantis has been a big fan of this deal, and is doing what he can to support it through his appointees on the Hillsborough College board and through the promise of FDOT road improvements. But this same governor has been the biggest proponent of proposals to eliminate property taxes on homesteaded parcels, which will leave local governments struggling to meet basic needs. He’s pushed for drastic cuts to local spending, including state “DOGE” audits of Hillsborough County. And yet, he is promoting a project that will cost city and county tax payers $1B. Does anyone else see the contradiction here?
To summarize, this hearing made several things clear:
- We are not close to a financial package that will meet the county’s and the team’s goals
- There are many items on the “still need to figure out” list and some of those items are significant
- The Rays April 2029 opening date seems very optimistic, I hope they are also talking to St. Pete about playing another season as a backup. And this isn’t some “government moves too slowly” rant — we’re talking about committing to a major use of money and land, and taking the time to get it right is important.
