Lightning may get property tax break

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Sotnos

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Business related, but not CBA related, how refreshing :): St. Pete Times 11/30/04

(Ignore the part about the players being "on strike", the author obviously isn't a sports writer :shakehead)

For those who don't know the background, the battle over this tax issue has been going on for a few years now, but this is the first sign I've seen that the Lightning might actually win.

I'm not a fan of corporate welfare, but if the county is already giving a break to the Bucs and especially to the Yankees, why not to the team that helped revitalize a large section of downtown?
 

thinkwild

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Jul 29, 2003
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The Habs always make the claim that they pay more in property taxes than all American teams combined. Bryden paid $4mil a year in property taxes, and put a ticket surcharge on to pay for the offramp to the arena. When he left, he still owed all the money for the offramp, but lobbied succesfully to lower property taxes to about $1mil. Still, they need maximum concessions from the players

Tampa Bay say they just want to be treated consistently. Seems fair. All owners of sports team keep the money for themselves, because they need it, its not fair to tax them to pay for hospitals and such. The owners are quite good at extracting arenas for free.

In return for this $1mil in revenue a year, TBay will promise to stay for 7 years. I wonder why they didnt make that contingent on getting a salary cap. Perhaps like the other owners, they know they will win that. Or do they know that with the concessions the players already have on the table, that Tampa could make money and stay for the next 7 years?
 

Sotnos

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thinkwild said:
The owners are quite good at extracting arenas for free.
I believe the ownership group that was involved at the time the arena was built paid for some of it, which is highly unusual in this day and age it seems. The current ownership paid for a lot of renovations, though the amount is disputable.

I personally don't think taxpayers should pay for any of this stuff really, and they certainly shouldn't foot the entire bill, BUT if Hillsborough county is giving tax breaks to the likes of the Glazers (owning the Bucs=license to print $$) and George fricken' Steinbrenner, then they certainly need to give a break to a team that's had a very discernable economic impact and is actually a local team.

But hey, I'm no economist so what do I know? I don't live in Hillsborough County either, so this only affects me as a fan of the team.
In return for this $1mil in revenue a year, TBay will promise to stay for 7 years. I wonder why they didnt make that contingent on getting a salary cap. Perhaps like the other owners, they know they will win that. Or do they know that with the concessions the players already have on the table, that Tampa could make money and stay for the next 7 years?
Huh? Like I said, this has nothing to do with the CBA, this is an issue that's they've been fighting over for at least the past three years. They'll make the guarantee to stay because they've been threatening to leave over this tax issue for years now, so if they're getting $1 mil/year in tax relief, they have to give a little too. They should make it for longer IMO, but anyway.

What's interesting about it is, now that the team has had some success, the county commissioners seem wary of coming out against giving the team a tax break, whereas when this issue came up last year they were all strongly against it and vocal about it.
 

Donnie D

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Sotnos said:
What's interesting about it is, now that the team has had some success, the county commissioners seem wary of coming out against giving the team a tax break, whereas when this issue came up last year they were all strongly against it and vocal about it.

Especially since it appears to be in a TIF, which means the county isn't collecting any property taxes anyway.
 
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