{"id":250450,"date":"2016-07-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-29T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/guest-editorial-a-few-truths-about-chargers-stadium-proposal\/"},"modified":"2016-07-29T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-07-29T07:00:00","slug":"guest-editorial-a-few-truths-about-chargers-stadium-proposal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/guest-editorial-a-few-truths-about-chargers-stadium-proposal\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest editorial: A few truths about Chargers\u2019 stadium proposal"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Omar Passons<\/p>\n

A friend asked my honest opinion about the San Diego Chargers\u2019 proposal for financing a new football stadium Downtown in East Village near the 12th & Imperial trolley station.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t possibly explain it all in a tweet, so I thought I\u2019d write a bit more. One problem with this conversation is that we don\u2019t usually set the table so that every citizen has the information they need to make a decision. So before I get to the truths, let\u2019s just get a few things out of the way first.<\/p>\n

\"low_corner_from_southwest_credit_manica\"<\/a>
Artist renderings show two views of proposed Chargers stadium in East Village (Courtesy of MANICA Architecture)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This decision is about a choice among priorities.<\/p>\n

Politicians have made an art form of cleverly telling us what the only choices for important public decisions are. If I ask my wife whether we should go out for Italian or Chinese food for dinner, a few things have happened. At first blush, it seems like a harmless question about delicious food to be found in great San Diego neighborhoods like North Park, Little Italy or Convoy. But I asked the question in a way that forces us to spend money going out to eat and takes \u201ceat at home\u201d off the table. It also rules out Thai or sushi or some other type of food.<\/p>\n

Llevar:<\/strong> When politicians or interest groups skip right to \u201chow should we fund the stadium,\u201d they\u2019ve already forced us to assume funding a stadium is the right priority. It cuts out any talk of helping youth get ready for educational success or rethinking how we fix infrastructure or solving the exodus of local police officers.<\/p>\n

Sources of money matter<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another favorite trick embraced by public figures is to talk about how the tax used to pay for the stadium shouldn\u2019t be a concern because San Diegans won\u2019t pay for it. A hotel tax (called a transient occupancy tax in San Diego) is an added percentage for the right to stay in the hotel that goes mostly into the city\u2019s general fund \u2014 which is the equivalent of a person\u2019s primary checking account. The reality of that hotel tax is that it is paid primarily by out of town visitors (and staycationers like my wife and I). The less obvious part, though, is that a city is a lot like a household in certain ways. Let\u2019s say you have two incomes at home, maybe also a rental property, and a side consulting business. These items make up all the ways your household can increase its income. If you raise the rent on your rental property, it has a couple important effects.<\/p>\n

First, the extra money you raise can\u2019t be spent twice. That means once you raise the rent as much as you can, and you put it towards some new Netflix membership, that\u2019s it. No more new revenue to play with. Second, you can\u2019t raise the rent indefinitely. At some point your tenant will just make a different, cheaper decision on where to live.<\/p>\n

\"midaerial_from_southwest_credit_manica\"<\/a>Applied to the stadium situation, the city of San Diego has only a few good sources to raise money to pay for things. It has sales tax, property tax, fees for things like building a house or collecting trash, and hotel taxes. Even though the hotel tax is being paid by someone else, once the city \u201craises the rent,\u201d so to speak, there is no using that money for something else. No staffing 911 call centers, no fixing the billions of dollars in maintenance we\u2019ve ignored while taking victory laps on budget \u201csurplus\u201d claims, and no creative centers of reading and coding excellence in libraries to make area youth more competitive even though our city has the world\u2019s most important Bioinformatics hub and a billion dollar software industry. None of these great alternatives are possible once we check the box to spend the money on the Chargers.<\/p>\n

Llevar:<\/strong> If as a city we vote to raise the hotel tax for one purpose, we won\u2019t have other new revenue sources to pay for some other things we care about.<\/p>\n

About the Chargers measure<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now that we\u2019ve covered a little background, let\u2019s get into the Chargers\u2019 measure itself<\/a> [bit.ly\/1RrrDh1<\/a>]. First, you\u2019d be forgiven if you didn\u2019t know exactly where the proposed stadium would go. The boundaries are in Downtown \u2014 K Street, 16th, Imperial, 12th \u2014 in East Village. All of the tax increase would go to pay for the convention center and stadium. That\u2019s millions of dollars that our leadership could choose to make a case for spending on our multibillion-dollar infrastructure deficit, on properly funding and staffing our Police and Fire Departments, or \u2014 gasp \u2014 on improving economic growth and opportunity for all San Diegans so that our children in Clairemont, Encanto, Pacific Beach and City Heights all could find a path into our high-growth innovation sectors.<\/p>\n

Specific clauses to consider <\/strong><\/p>\n

[Download full text at bit.ly\/29rLkaz<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Usually what happens in these proposals is that supporters and opponents will deceive us not with outright lies but by being selective about which truths they share. To some extent, being selective is necessary because the proposal is more than 100 pages long. That said, I\u2019ve chosen sections below that I think are important to consider regardless of what you think about the issue \u2014 some are positive, some are negative. But you decide how important they are.<\/p>\n