Milwaukee Area Legislators Propose Miller Park User Fees

[sheethead]

Maybe we should go back to the idea that people had in 1996, and just sell Racine to Illinois to pay off the stadium....

How much do you think we could get for Racine? I doubt it would be enough to cover the stadium. I thought we could throw in Janesville, but now I would assume we would have to pay Illinois to take Janesville off our hands.

[TwinsBrewersWorldSeries]

Hey guys, great discussion on this. Wasn't sure if it would garner much attention, but i would offer this. The casual brewer fan that goes to 1-2 games a year would barely notice the user fee. A group of four buddies would have to fork out an additional $5 per game (assume 4 tickets, 1 parked car). That is less than the cost of a beer inside the stadium. This is a bad example (since food isn't taxed), but an average family probably spends $100/week on groceries. A 1/10% tax equates to about $5.00 on a year's worth of groceries, again not a huge deal.

 

I think all and all, we've been trained to be "anti-tax" regardless of the purpose, instead of trying to find a meaningful way of balancing the need for tax revenue (and property taxes) versus the public good. Clearly Miller Park has been a huge asset to the community the past 2-3 years. During the dark ages of the decade, it probably could have been fairly justified as a poor investment, but now with record attendance, it clearly is the "place to be" during the summer and we are attracting thousands of fans/tourists from other states. Maybe the Brewers can tie "tax revenue" with a winning record??? years where we have a winning record, the Stadium gets the tax revenue, years the brewers don't etc.... (ok ok, i know that isn't practical)

 

At the end of the day, despite living in northwest wisconsin, i make about 20-25 trips to MP per year. paying an extra $25 per season would be fine by me if it leads to lower taxes (even though i don't currently pay any to the stadium district). If they leave it the way it is, fine, but i do think from a public relations perspective that it would be nice if the MLBPA/Owners actually contributed more to fund their private enterprise rather than taxing an unwilling public or middle class fans. If the NFL/NBA/MLB devoted 10% of all revenue to maintaining their stadiums/facilities, they'd never need to ask the public for a dime.

[logan82]

I am more than a casual fan and really can't afford to go to more than a few games a year already. This would cut even further into my games. Things start to cost more when you have kids. This will have a much bigger impact on a family going to a game than a person only buying one ticket.

[jeffy]

How can $1 per ticket possibly be enough to fund the ball park, anyway?

 

After-all it costs the team $2 per ticket just for me to print my tickets at home, based on the fee for that, which is most certainly based on their actual costs, right? http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Invader3K]

Well, with attendance like this year, an extra dollar per ticket amounts to about $3 million. Not bad coin, though I'm not sure what exact costs this fee would actually be going toward.

[RightFieldCoder]

He's talking about this now because the current tax isn't meeting expected revenue amounts. What happens if the Brewers slide back to 1.5 million fans?

[JJHardy7]

The difference, Ajay, is that it is a tax funded building for a private for profit enterprise.

Exactly. Good post homer. I can 100% understand why some don't want a dime going to the stadium and why some do...that debate was a long time ago though. Without getting too political, sales tax revenue suffers big-time in a bad economy and projects that use this money suffer. I guess I don't really like the methodology being changed for paying for a portion of the stadium...they should've thought about this possibility before it was built.

On a side note, the state I live in probably isn't going to build a new stadium for the Sounds because of the decline in sales tax. The state more or less has no personal income tax and the property taxes are very low (ie 2,000 sq ft house = < $1,500 property taxes).

[ewizabeff]

I don't think a usage fee is fair at all. The brewers has a fan base that contributes to the team through merchandise sales, television revenues, etc. Many of these fans rarely, if ever, make it to a game. We have some of the highest rated televised games in the country, especially when you consider our market size.

 

For some reason I'm having trouble forming a logical argument right now, but I think a tax is much more fair than a user fee for a sport that gets income from sources other than in-person fans. Yes, I think the tax should end when it originally was meant to, but after that it's up to the team to figure out how to make more money, not legislators.

 

I am no expert, and fully expect my argument to be ripped apart.

[JimH5]

I don't know why this was ever positioned as though we were buying a stadium for the Brewers. That's hardly the case. We were buying a stadium for ourselves so that we could watch Brewers games in a new building. What difference did it make that the Brewers were a for profit entity. They were a for profit club playing in County Stadium, which was also publicly funded. Unfortunately, this became an argument about corporate welfare, when the real beneficiaries are the fans who attend the games.

 

That said, I'm for continuing the sales tax until that debt is paid off, and then having it end. I'm not going to hold them to the projection dates, as revenues have fallen short, but that tax is being charged for a specific reason, and once the debt is gone, so should the tax.