Thursday, May 04, 2006

Carroon is no Marroon

The Salt Lake Tribune Headine: No deal for Real.

"Real Salt Lake's aspirations to tap hotel-tax money to build a soccer stadium in Sandy are dead, after Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon announced Wednesday that the 'numbers just don't work' for county taxpayers."

The $35 Million tax subsidy of the team is not 100% dead. "Corroon's bold move...[could be counteracted if] [v]oters...approve stadium funding - through a property-tax increase - if the County Council or Sandy agreed to place that question on November's already-crowded ballot."

Carroon went against the powerful mayor of Sandy, the House Speaker (also from Sandy) and one of the most popular governors in the Union. "We must have tried 20 iterations of how to do this deal," the County Mayor told columist Holly Mullen, "what it would look like if we did this or did that. It always came back to the same thing. We couldn't find a fiscally responsible way to make it work."

"It struck me that day," Mullen said about RSL's season kickoff and announcement about the Sandy Stadium last fall, "as slightly tacky and even politically risky that Checketts et al pulled Corroon onto the dais almost as an afterthought. He was the man who, as it turned out, the rest of them really, really needed. And his name was last on the thank-you list. "

As much as I like soccer and as sad is I would be to see RSl go if they did leave for Phoenix as they have threatened, I say good riddence to taxpayer subsidized sports and whiny idiotic sports management.

And to Carroon, if he keeps this up, he will be reeelected in a landslide. A Democrat that stands tall and calls it like it is to save his constituent's money? That's a winner.

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