Small Cons and a Big Con

The Chargers knew that the chances of getting a stadium deal on its own merits was slim at best, nonexistent at worst. They claimed to need $350 million in revenue from the city, but in reality they needed $550 million given that the $300 NFL “contribution” included a $100 million grant and a $200 million loan.

The plan was to sell the deal in Mission Valley with new 2% hotel tax paying the cost so that they could convince the people of San Diego that it would require “no new taxes.”  After several months of peddling this plan somebody pointed out that a court had ruled that 2% hotel tax illegal. Ironically, they thought they could get away with diverting that tax to the stadium because the hotels weren't presently getting it anyway.

That is the first of two small cons. The hotel tax increase supposedly is “from 12.2% to 16.5%” and is merely a 30% increase. Except that the 2% tax is not currently being imposed and so the actual increase is a 60% one, from 10.5% to 16.5%.

The second small con is that in the current plan there is still no mention made as to how the $200 million loan from the NFL will be repaid.

The big con is that, knowing he could not possibly sell his stadium to the taxpayers, Spanos combines it with a convention center expansion which is much more well received by the public. The public will vote in favor of the convention center expansion so that ComicCon will not carry out its threat to move to Los Angeles, and will not mind that the price of that expansion is a football stadium that we don’t want.

Sort of ironic that we don’t mind if the Chargers move to LA, we just don’t want ComicCon to do so. Tells you something about San Diego.