This post originally appeared on 28 April 2015.
Did you know, that no matter how much money MountainStar Sports Group makes from that ballpark, El Pasoans will never see a return on their investment? Not a dime. MSSG can fill their pockets, but El Pasoans will never see one red cent. On the contrary, El Pasoans will still be shilling out money to the fat cats at MSSG to keep the ballpark operating.
Our immediate past City Government ceded responsibility for contract negotiation to the lame duck City Manager. El Paso’s return is supposed to be “economic development.” That’s right. Fifty million bucks, plus, and all we were offered was some vague promises of economic development, even though the vast bulk of studies of subsidized sports venues concluded that ballparks offer little to no economic development.
You know what we got? “It’s All Good.” Because the high-powered snake oil salesmen were too busy talking deep-pocketed investors into buying into the scheme to spend any time charming the voters. So we get “It’s All Good.”
So close your eyes and pretend: It’s All Good.
We knew this going in, but nobody would listen, would they? Now, I think, it is even worse than we had anticipated, but we still have no real taxpayer/resident/citizen representation in City Council, do we?
YEP…for that one the voters were only offered the option of agreeing to use the HOT to pay for it, not whether it would be built. Ms. Wilson and the Council of 2012 arranged the bond election that included the “multi-purpose performing arts and entertainment facility,” her manipulation to exclude “sports arena” which advisors had warned would ensure the vote would be negative. We’re still struggling with that one. And Wilson hung around on the public teat after she left the city manager’s job. Some of us saw what was happening but none of us had any way to stop it!