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Facts are scant as Tampa Bay Rays stadium vote nears

By Howard Troxler, Times Columnist
In print: Sunday, May 25, 2008

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A week from Thursday, the St. Petersburg City Council will face its first deadline for calling a November election on a waterfront baseball stadium for the Tampa Bay Rays.

As the date draws closer, the Rays' spin is that the June 5 meeting is not the drop-dead decision date. It's just a vote to keep the question open. The final decision on an election won't be made until August.

And yet, the upcoming vote means something. It means that in the judgment of the City Council, we know enough to move forward.

So, do we?

Events of this past week raised new questions. On Tuesday, the Pinellas County Commission — which also has the power to kill the deal — had its turn at bat, and with some irritation peppered the Rays with line drives.

Is it fair, commissioners asked, that the county is being asked to contribute $100-million in tourism taxes, while the city pays only $75-million?

Couldn't the county do other good things with that tourism-tax money? The county's tourism board doesn't even meet to talk about it until June 11; is the cart in front of the horse?

Will the plan to sell off Tropicana Field to developers compete with the county's own plans to redevelop its Toytown landfill?

"The more you talk," Commissioner John Morroni told team official Michael Kalt, "the more questions I start writing down here."

His colleague Ken Welch complained that the county has been left "on the outside looking in." Susan Latvala said she was "uncomfortable" at having never been contacted by the city at all and learning key points only from the newspaper.

"I want," she declared, "to look them in the eye."

And Commissioner Robert Stewart, a player in the decision to build Tropicana Field a generation ago, was acerbic about how late in the game the Rays had come to ask for tourism-tax dollars: "It wouldn't have taken a rocket scientist to have figured that out many months ago."

Actually, I was a little surprised, and still do not know whether this was just saber-rattling by the county. It would take an unprecedented amount of guts for the County Commission to kill the deal unilaterally.

Two days later, the City Council held a workshop and public hearing (with a strong majority of speakers in opposition) and sounded its own skeptical note. In particular, one of the questions was my favorite — is this deal supposed to pay for itself, or not?

Remember, that's part of the sales pitch. We sell off Tropicana Field to developers, and all the good stuff that gets built there will generate taxes that help pay for the stadium. But neither the Rays nor the potential developers have been willing to guarantee anything.

We do not know what kind of deal the city is making with the Tropicana developers. We do not know the most basic outline of the deal to come between the city and the Rays for construction, for stadium management, for naming rights.

Hey, I'm a Rays fan. I'm open to the stadium concept and think it could be great for downtown. What I said last Sunday still goes — show that the dollars work, and that's at least enough to keep moving forward.

But we don't have that. Only the request to keep saying yes now, and promises to figure out the rest later.

At what point should the county or the city say no?