Steve Kelley: A better stadium/transit plan
05/02/2006
A metrowide half-cent sales tax could modernize both our sports facilities and expand our busways and rail systems.
by Steve Kelley
Published: May 02, 2006
Any proposal for professional sports facilities, and especially one that involves taxes, is bound to be controversial. Policymakers are faced with the challenge of devising the best solution possible, despite the controversy. The right course may seem clear, but there are always big rocks and sea monsters ready to sink the ship.
The Minnesota Twins and officials from Hennepin County deserve enormous credit for working together to devise a good, practical solution to building the ballpark. But today, legislators and the governor have before them an even better solution.
Our solution not only ensures the Twins and Vikings continue their important contributions to Minnesota’s future, but also provides money for much-needed transit construction in the Twin Cities metro area. Under this plan, we can build stadiums for both teams and build a comprehensive transit system by the year 2020 that will benefit everyone in the state.
The plan would include a half-cent seven-county metro-area sales tax that would pump more than $100 million into metro transit development every year. The metro solution pays the costs of the Twins and Vikings stadiums, with roofs, within the next decade and avoids hundreds of millions of interest payments and other financing costs.
With these additional dollars, the Twin Cities metro area could quickly move forward on a comprehensive transit system, including the Central Corridor, Red Rock Corridor in the East metro, the Rush Line to the north, potential light rail in the western suburbs and expanded metro busways. As high gasoline prices put the squeeze on family budgets, transit options are essential for our future. It is time to see these investments to our regional infrastructure together, because they will help maintain our ability to compete with other regions.
If you look at other cities that have recently built new ballparks and expanded their transit systems, you see a regional commitment to public investment, using sales taxes as the facilitator. In Denver, the original quarter-cent sales tax in a newly created stadium district was directed to extend LRT to connect existing lines with all three downtown stadiums. The result has been a metrowide system that has benefited not only sports fans, but the entire Denver metro area. Because of the success of the initial investment tied to the stadium, Colorado voters recently approved an increase to 1 cent for an expanded and comprehensive LRT system. LRT is successful in Denver, and ridership has met all projections.
We need to provide the transit options upfront. Although a transit plan was required as part of the Seattle stadium deal, funding there was initially inadequate. Seattle made a new commitment to transit. Using a sales tax increase and federal grants, light-rail transit will link its stadium to other sites. Phoenix approved a half-cent sales tax for transit systems in addition to a new stadium package. The tax was reauthorized and increased with popular support in 2004.
Phoenix, Seattle and Denver are similarly sized cities/regions that compete with the Twin Cities for businesses and new residents. They have seen the benefits of modernizing their sports facilities and their transit systems. There is no advantage to waiting when the opportunity to catch up through action today is before us.
Minnesotans have debated the stadium issues for the past decade. We have also seen the benefits of new transit investments. It is time to score a win for all Minnesotans by modernizing both our sports facilities and our transit systems this year.
Steve Kelley, DFL-Hopkins, is a member of the Minnesota Senate and a candidate for governor.