elpasospeak

We have to wonder why the sports group has launched an advertising campaign to garner support for a downtown sports arena.

Bonds have been approved for a multipurpose cultural and performing arts facility.

A state judge has ruled that the facility may not be designed to host sporting events.

The city is appealing.

It seems to us that the matter is in the hands of the courts.

Who are they trying to influence?

Do they think that the issue is going to have to go back to the voters?

If it is city council they are seeking to influence, it seems that they already have more direct methods.

We deserve better

Brutus

City officials used a report from Richard Florida to justify their moves toward downtown revitalization a few years ago.

The other day we heard this from NPR:

Richard Florida promotes what he calls the creative class. He has said for years that cities prosper when they attract upscale innovators and entrepreneurs. Make your city a place where the creative class wants to live, and they, in turn, will create jobs.

INSKEEP: Many cities followed that advice. And now Richard Florida faces the downside. The creative class, he says, is creating cities that are massively unequal.

Unequal indeed.

We deserve better

Brutus

When the ball park bonds were originally sold the city told us they would make a large bullet payment of $17.4 million on the bonds in 2023.

We wrote about that in No Principles back in November of 2013.

No one should be surprised that city council knew that coming up with an extra $17.4 million dollars all at one time would not be possible.

The solution

The new management at the city has taken the steps necessary to keep us from having to cough up the money in 2023.

The April 11, 2016 meeting of the Downtown Development Corporation (city council in sheep’s clothing) gave permission to sell refinancing bonds.  The refinancing bonds will be used to buy back bonds that were issued in 2013 and thus eliminate the bullet payment.

Interest rates have gone down and money can be saved by locking in a lower rate through refinancing.

Unfortunately they felt the need to finance the $17.4 million also.

The result?

From the refinancing resolution:

the aggregate amount of payments to be made on the Series 2016 Bonds shall not exceed the aggregate amount of payments that would have been made on the refunded Series 2013 Tax Exempt Bonds had the refunding not occurred by more than $13,285,000, net of any issuer contribution

Even with the interest savings we still are going to pay up to another $13.2 million in interest because of the need to finance the $17.4 million bullet payment.

The problem here is that financing numbers did not work back in 2013.  The city put the $17.4 million in as a bullet payment to make it look like they financing was viable.

Does it ever end?

We deserve better

Brutus

When city council decided to build our ballpark they created the Downtown Development Corporation (DDC).

Note that it was not named the Ballpark Development Corporation.

That should tell us something.

While the DDC is required to comply with Texas local government rules it seems to want to operate behind the scenes.

They have held meetings in June, August, and October of 2013 as well as in March of 2015 and April of 2016.

None of the meeting minutes for those meetings are available on the DDC website even though minutes for earlier meetings are.

We deserve better

Brutus

The operators of our ball park will certainly have something to say if the city moves forward with plans to tear down our convention center and build a new arena right next door to the ball park.

That is unless the folks from the ball park end up running the arena too.

From what we can see hosting events at both facilities at the same time will be an absolute nightmare.

Does this mean that the arena will sit empty whenever the ball park is hosting an event?

We deserve better

Brutus