WHOSE BALLPARK IS IT?
The Monongalia County “Ballpark TIF” is not supposed to be a charity for WVU. The public is funding the baseball stadium. WVU is not. So the public should own the baseball stadium. WVU should not.
The public is funding the multi-use baseball stadium with local tax dollars to the tune of $16.2 million, plus building an adjacent interstate highway interchange with local tax dollars costing $28 million, plus providing additional millions in near vicinity infrastructure.
WVU is purchasing a 7 acre site for the ballpark from private developers for $2.1 million. Compare WVU’s $2.1 million to the local taxpayers’ $16.2 million plus $28 million plus untold other TIF plan millions. Yet WVU claims ownership of the stadium via WVU associate general counsel Rossi Wiles:
“By law, whoever owns the ground, pretty much [the baseball stadium] would go…to that entity, which, we do believe to protect the university’s interest and to play our baseball games, it really should come to the university.”
Wealthy entities, like WVU athletics, can afford to buy and build their own ball fields and stadiums. The public’s tax dollars should not be used buy a new baseball stadium for WVU athletics, nor for anyone else. After all, the owners are going to make the bulk of the money off the stadium facilities, and the owners will get the highest priority use of the stadium facilities, so they should pay for it. If WVU would like to set up a payment plan to repay Monongalia County (and the state), then I’m sure the Commissioners would be glad to help make such arrangements.
We should’ve seen it coming – WVU Athletic Director Oliver Luck pushing tens of millions of public dollars into the pockets of the wealthy through ballfields in Texas and West Virginia.
Since June 2010, Oliver Luck has been the Athletic Director at West Virginia University. A former WVU quarterback, NFL quarterback for the Houston Oilers, and a West Virginia Republican (failed) congressional candidate, Luck returned to WVU after working as head of the Houston Dynamo soccer team and head of the City of Houston and Harris County Sports Authorities, where he helped to secure public financing for the new Houston Dynamo soccer stadium.
The City of Houston and Harris County were convinced by Oliver Luck and his colleagues – it took five years – to put $35 million dollars (the public’s tax dollars) into buying the site for a new Dynamo soccer stadium and for making infrastructure improvements. The Dynamo put $60 million into the stadium – much of which was then immediately covered by stadium naming rights (sold to a bank) and other multi-million dollar deals made by the Dynamo, while the city of Houston and Harris County were completely iced out of most or any such deals. In other words, the Dynamo owners could swiftly make back their investment in the stadium facility, whereas the city/county taxpayers’ investment was not necessarily recoverable. Similarly here in Monongalia County – why should WVU get away with not paying back to the local taxpayers the millions it plans to take from them to build a stadium to be owned, controlled, and used by WVU? Recall, WVU is backed by its own massive income, including by its $1 billion annual budget and additionally by the WVU Foundation, Inc, which currently holds $1.2 billion in assets.
It’s a sick and abusive relationship for local taxpayers in Monongalia County, where nearly 22 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, to be subsidizing a ballfield costing tens of millions of dollars for the gold stockpilers behind the WVU athletic department, which – oh by the way – pays the football coach Holgorsen $2.5 million per year, and basketball coach Huggins $3 million per year, and athletic direct Luck $.7 million per year, for a combined $6.2 million paid each and every year to a mere three employees at WVU athletics. WVU should get out of the public’s pockets and pay for the damned ballfield itself. Read the rest of this entry »
New Woodburn Community School 