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Message: [QUOTE="supp, post: 906763, member: 702"] Only the people who haven't been paying attention think that she's against the project. SU provided the Mayor's office no info on the project they had researched partly with taxpayer money despite repeated requests. Mahoney's office and the governor were left in the dark too. Even now, SU won't turn over its feasibility report but instead sends the Mayor a letter from their legal counsel with little more info than we already had. Why is that? I would be skeptical too. Mahoney and Cuomo have led the charge here and seem quite comfortable throwing around taxpayer money without having a full-fledged plan on how to do this or even knowing if it's worth doing. Previous experiences around the country with stadium building should give us all pause. When you fund major projects with bond issues, if you default on the payments at any time, you risk the bond rating institutions downgrading those bonds, raising your costs to borrow for this and any future project you may have. A concrete financial plan that minimizes the govt's burdens (short and long-term) isn't too much to ask for before we move ahead. I hate to keep bringing it up but it's a valid example: the City of Louisville has had big problems keeping up with repayments on the Yum Center and the bonds they issued for it have recently been downgraded to "junk" status. This makes everything that the City wants to do more difficult and expensive going forward. Bond issues for vital (and not vanity) city projects in the future are going to be that much harder and more expensive to launch. There are long-term effects to consider with a project like this. It's shocking to me that some of the Repubs on board here are seemingly encouraging us to go through with this project blindly, only because the Democrat mayor is looking to slow things down. This is exactly the kind of fiscal irresponsibility that they like to rail against the Dems for. You can talk about economic development but studies have shown that beyond the short-term boost in construction jobs, new stadiums don't create much in the way of an economic knock-on effect. This project doesn't solve any of the city's longterm problems. And the County residents should care about that because they're going to be part of the bailout if/when Syracuse goes belly up. It's definitely worth asking in my mind whether for $500 million we're really getting the bang for our buck. No one doubts that this project is a home run for SU. People like Miner are wondering if it's a home run for Syracuse and Onondaga County. [/QUOTE]

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