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Citizen D
Rad Field
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05/03/04 Trouble swallowing Jerry
Jones Stadium Deal?
If you are feeling a little queasy and wondering
what's wrong, you are likely choking on a Cotton Ball. Now, you can
empathize with your poor kitty -- how he must feel about 5 minutes before he
gives you a rather unsightly present right in front of your dinner guests.
We have been ingesting hairballs for months as one politician after another positions himself or herself in a
vacillating stance from accommodating and excited to reserved and pessimistic
toward taxpayers funding a new stadium for Jerry Jones, at Fair Park or anywhere
else.
It's all a game that goes back to DallasArena.com's
Br'er Rabbit
theory. We are being conned, and the folks
doing it don't even care if we know it.
This new hard ball stance of the County Commissioners Court against giving $400+
million of our money to Jerry Jones is merely a ruse. When they wind up
giving Grandpa Jones $200+ million of our money, they will tell us how hard they
fought to protect us and keep the Cowboys in Dallas County got him down from
$400+ million.
As hard as it is for me to say this, the arrogant little jerk who publishes the
fashion magazine (or is it the restaurant magazine) called "D"
is right when he says the City Council and Commissioners Court should call Jerry
Jones' bluff. Let Collin County or Tarrant County give Jones $400+
million. What's he going to do? Change the team name to the "Plano
Cowboys" or the "Ft. Worth Cowboys"? Not likely! The Cowboys don't
play in Dallas now. |
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Wayne Howard (5/4):
When it comes to Jones and the public, I've noticed he equates
Dallas County taxpayers with Dallas Cowboy fans. He seems to figure if
you're one thing, you must be the other. A good dose of people out here
couldn't give a flyin flip off a barn if he stays here or goes elsewhere.
He's just someone else trying to use our
money that otherwise could go to improving our
society. The people who need the most help wouldn't be able to get in the
gates of the place anyway --couldn't afford
it.
If we put up the majority of the
change into a place like this, the COUNTY should be regulating ticket prices
and keep Jones out in the cold. Then, I MIGHT be
able to afford to go to one of the games without mortgaging my house. |
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Since we have had several readers comment, this issue will be to respond to
them.
Irving and Grand Prairie are busy down in Austin
making sure Grandpa Jones' personal State Senators Royce West and John
Carona are not successful in getting legislation through to remove the
prohibition against using car rental sales taxes to fund sports facilities
built on public park land.
We know Fair Park is a Dallas City Park because it is so neglected.
That's how you can always be sure who owns what in this town.
If the city owns it and Joe Taxpayers use it (like Fair Park and the Zoo),
it is not on the A list of City Hall priorities. If it's something Our
Mayor's Park Cities friends want (like an Opera House, the Meyerson, the Art
Museum), the rules are different and needed funds for upkeep are always
found and available.
Grandpa Jones tried to get Irving taxpayers to remove themselves from DART
and give him that sales tax. They were able to resist his Arkansas
charm. Irving's Mayor says the impact on Irving will be negligible if
Jones takes his thugs to play in Dallas. |
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David Cook:
Started to write the DMN, but I
can hardly stand to read the rag. Without the
NY Times and Star Telegram, the only
news I would hear about would be who has the best
furniture sales going on, but that's another story...
My issue is the extreme silence (not)
reported on the part of Irving to keep the Cowboys. Has Irving just
folded up its tent and accepted the fact that
Dallas is dumber than they are and more willing to pad Jones'
already well-stocked pockets?
I can't imagine a bigger hell than going to
a football game in Fair Park. Almost anyone in the
Metroplex can be at Texas Stadium within 30-45 minutes.
Move the stadium downtown,
and you tack on at least that much more drive time (and I live in Dallas).
Higher taxes to subsidize the Jones?
Good enough for Perot, even better for JJ.
Please publish something about what Irving
is up to. |
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According to people who are supposed to know this stuff, Grandpa Jones has
bought a lot of land in Irving. They think this Fair Park stuff is
smoke screen. |
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Chip Northrup:
You are right on the scuttlebutt - word is this tax grab is going to Irving,
because City can't get it together for Fair Park.
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I think Grandpa Jones wants Fair
Park and is using Irving as a weapon on our City Council and the County
Commissioners. Irving must feel like it has no voice at the County level
since no one seems to be standing up for its interests.
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Hotel group may take stadium-tax fight to Legislature
06:12 PM CDT
on Monday, April 26, 2004
By BRAD
WATSON / WFAA-TV |
Dallas hotel owners and operators are
promising a fight in the Texas Legislature to try and stop higher taxes that
would pay for a new Cowboys stadium at Fair Park.
State law is clear that car-rental
taxes can't be used to finance a stadium in a city park; now, hotels say
that applies to taxes on them, too. ... hotel
officials said they'll check in first at the Legislature to stop it.
"I think it
would be a fierce fight, because I think there's a lot of passion involved
in this issue," said Sandi Bailey of the Hotel Association of Greater
Dallas. ... the group's attorneys checked
state law, and found no power for the county to levy a hotel tax that would
finance a stadium at a municipal park. That means the Legislature and
Governor Rick Perry would need to approve changing the law before the
November referendum wanted by the Cowboys.
... Cowboys officials said they're tackling
a lot of stadium issues right now, and although changing the law is another
obstacle, it's not considered a deal-breaker.
... The last time hotels opposed the Cowboys, they
lost. The team successfully persuaded lawmakers to raise the tax limit to
finance a stadium. ... |
Yeah, right! Local
hotel/motel owners sat on their hands during the Hicks/Perot Arena fight, even
though their colleagues in Austin contributed financially to It's A Bad Deal!!.
Push come to shove, don't count on the Hotel Association of Greater Dallas.
A "lot of passion" out of this groups is the equivalent to
a glass of warm milk. If there's any passion coming from HAGD, it's
terror. They know their "go along to get along" cowardliness in 1998 is
why our convention business is in the tank in 2004.
Much of D Magazine's
advertising comes from $$$ restaurants that depend on convention business to
prosper or even keep their doors open. They are suffering big time these
days. Apparently, there is a limit to how many local rich people will drop
hundreds of dollars a night for dinner in Dallas. Even Wick Allison is
acknowledging the disastrous impact Ron Kirk's Arena tax (which Allison
supported) has had on our convention business and conversely our hotel/motel
business and luxury restaurant business. Our hotels and motels and
restaurants pay property and sales taxes and employee lots of Dallas people --
at least they did before Ron Kirk's Arena tax destroyed our convention business.
Jon's point indirectly relates to our current
issue. Grandpa Jones not only wants Dallas and Dallas County taxpayers
to build him a new place of business, but he wants to rip off DISD school
children at the same time. If he builds his place of business on city
owned property, he gets to keep it off the tax rolls like Tom Hicks and Mark
Cuban. These new Robber Barons continue to buy just enough politicians
and employ enough low life vote harvesters like Kathy Neely and Joe Thug May
and their gangs to steal from our children.
DISD students (and their teachers) really get hurt in all this wrongdoing.
Not only are they deprived of tax resources which a business facility
costing $600+ million to build would generate, but they will inherit a
broken city whose resources were diverted from basic services to build
sports facilities and opera houses that only a small percentage of city
residents can afford or desire to use. |
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Jon Huff (5/3):
Finally got a chance to read the entire
DMN Tip thing. While the report
itself did not contain too many surprises (besides
the DISD being 60% Hispanic), I was surprised
by the childish responses some leaders had when
approached with the report. You would figure
that's how they would react in
private, but in a forum where they
could be quoted?
Our civic leaders should heed
comments from new head of the Visitors
and Convention Bureau that DISD
was the issue when he chose whether to live in the
city or in a suburb.
If the guy hired to sell the city
won't live here, why should anyone else? |
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The
DMN has a
great story on the war of wills between former Mayor Erik Jonsson and former
Cowboy owner Clint Murchison back in the 60's.
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Stadium debate not a new game;
Before leaving Dallas,
'Boys owner battled for downtown digs
11:23 AM CDT on Sunday,
May 2, 2004
By MICHAEL GRANBERRY / The Dallas Morning News |
... In the late 1960s, Mayor Erik Jonsson wanted
the Cowboys to remain in the Cotton Bowl. Founding owner Clint Murchison Jr.
wanted a new stadium downtown.
... "It was Dad's dream to put it in the West End
with the stadium as an anchor. It was going to have a new performing arts
center and museums all around it," says Robert Murchison, 50, son of the
late Cowboys' owner.
... As head of a powerful oligarchy that governed
Dallas, the mayor and other members of the Citizens Charter Association
wanted the Cowboys' stadium to remain in Fair Park. They regarded the park,
built in 1936 for the Texas Centennial, as a jewel.
... "Clint and Erik did not travel in the same
social circles or subscribe to the same politics," says Gary Cartwright
... "I imagine that Erik thought that Clint was a socialist snob, and
I'm fairly sure that Clint thought that Erik was a reactionary clod."
... "Erik Jonsson rehabilitated the city in the
post-JFK assassination era," says historian Darwin Payne, who is writing his
biography.
... The mayor's son, Philip Johnson, 79, still
lives in Dallas. He says his father spurned Mr. Murchison's pleas for a
downtown stadium because he was focused on a $175 million bond issue, the
foundation of Goals for Dallas. ... "Clint
Jr. came to my dad and wanted a stadium to be included in that. The judgment
of my dad and others at the time was that they didn't want a stadium
included in that. They did tell him that, in the next bond election, they
would look with favor on a new stadium ... though not necessarily downtown."
... What the mayor agreed to was a sprucing-up of
the Cotton Bowl ...
None of that was good enough
for Mr. Murchison, whose letters indicate he was willing to finance a
downtown stadium on his own.
... "I don't know that Erik Jonsson thought much
about downtown Dallas, or about anything else except pleasing the business
community," Mr. Cartwright says. "Vision was not one of the business
communities' strong suits, or the mayor's either."
But others disagree, saying the mayor
was not just a visionary but an intellectual who considered pro sports an
opiate of the masses.
... Mr. Payne says the mayor's dreams of a bold
new downtown, shared with international city planner Vincent Ponti, never
included a stadium. "He saw it not as an asset but as a detriment to the
Goals for Dallas. ... He saw Fair Park as one of the ornaments of the city.
He, along with all the boosters, wanted only to build it up."
... That was, for Mr. Murchison, a deal
breaker. He cited crime and traffic as chief among the Cotton Bowl's
problems. ... "I think I should caution you
that in the last two years of the Cowboys' stay at the Cotton Bowl there
were reported to me (and not carried in the newspapers) at least six cases
of muggings and purse snatchings and one extremely frightening case of
terrorism perpetrated upon the employee of a friend of mine," Mr. Murchison
wrote.
... When the Cowboys played at the Cotton Bowl,
50-yard line seats went for $6 a ticket. Luxury suites did not exist.
Blue-collar white, black and Hispanic fans shared the stands with the
wealthy.
... Faced with mounting financial problems, Mr.
Murchison sold the Cowboys to H.R. "Bum" Bright in 1984.
... His dream "could have changed the history of the city," Robert
Murchison says. "Had it happened, we would not be going through the
tremendous rebuilding of downtown Dallas that we're faced with now."
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Give me a break! Clint
Murchison, Jr. was a womanizer and party guy who signed notes for all kinds of
leeches who partied with him. When his $500 a month millionaire buddies
all started crashing and the banks called their notes, Clint Murchison, Jr. had
to pay up. He not only had to sell the Cowboys, but much of his real
estate, including land around his home on Forest Ln. Had he built a
stadium in the West End area in 30 years ago, it would be out of date and ready
to be abandoned by Grandpa Jones today, like Texas Stadium. Look at what
surrounds Texas Stadium today -- not all that much. Proof is in the
stadium! Texas Stadium might have even been a detriment to development in
the area.
Visionary? Please! Murchison was a greedy self-absorbed little man
who loved being a big shot. He inherited millions from his father, who
left him with a lot more money than Clint, Jr. left his kids -- not to mention
the heirs of his brother who predeceased him, who was much more classy and civic
minded.
Stadiums don't generate new development. People who can afford tickets to
football games usually drive their cars to the games and get the heck out of the
area as fast as traffic will allow after the games.
What they are telling their lobbyists and what they are telling us and the
media may be light years apart.
John Carona killed a 2-year 1/2 cent sales tax to restore Fair Park, and
then just a few years later carried water for Con Jerk as Treasurer for the
Hicks/Perot Arena campaign. Where a limited 1/2 cent sales tax would
have made permanent improvements at Fair Park, the sales tax Carona promoted
has destroyed our convention business making the millions we invested in
updating and expanding our convention center another waste of taxpayer
funds.
Royce West has always been a hack for Our Downtown Betters (the ODB).
West takes money from rich White Guys, and stomps on working class White
Guys. West is the reason that former Southwest Airlines employee (17
years) Boggs lost his job over a drunken joke at a Christmas party.
No one knows what Judge Keliher is thinking or telling her lobbyist.
She can't get past being a real judge who had to carefully weigh both sides
to being the leader of the Commissioners Court.
Aliens have taken the Pothole Queen, and we don't know this woman who is
pretending to be Laura Miller. |
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JP (5/3):
What are the City and County telling their Austin lobbyists to do
about the arena tax in parks prohibition? That's the weathervane on where
this is headed.
Compassionately Corrupt Corona is
trying to overturn the prohibition of using taxes
to fund arenas in parks where there can be no spin off
private development.
Rolls Royce West is carrying the
bill.
What is Soccer Nazi Maggie Keliher
telling her lobbyist to do about it ?
Where is
the Pothole Queen ? |
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They are going to try to keep
him on the side lines and have Steven Jones be the front man in this campaign,
but this fight is going to be squarely about Jerry Jones.
When you hear anyone from the Jones gang talking about how good this is
going to be for Dallas and South Dallas and Fair Park, you better hold your
hand on your wallet. That means they will play the race card, and
anyone who opposes giving them $400+ million is a racist who wants to stifle
redevelopment in South Dallas.
Grandpa Jones has made a lot of money off Dallas. He should do this
project himself as a gift to this city.
Fat chance of that!
The Bass Family in Ft. Worth build great facilities and then give them to
the city. Look what Sundance Square has done for Downtown Ft. Worth. |
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John King
(5/3):
Never meet you in person but you looked very well discussing your
opposition to Jerry Jones "Possible Dream" of getting all kinds of people to
pay taxes for his nice stadium for his team.
Jones is an up-front candid
guy with sentiments like: I
want my team to have the best football stadium. I want
you voters and legislators to approve high taxes to pay for
most of it. After my stadium
gets built, it will bring lots of money into my
billfold. I don't share revenue.
Never trust any man
that fired Tom Landry. |
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It is very doubtful the stadium
election will be on the November ballot, unless Ken Mayfield or Judge Keliher
fold on us. This should be a stand alone issue, so people know what they
are going to the polls about.
The Dallas Managed News
is already calling it the Cowboys' stadium and only mentioning Jerry Jones
whenever necessary. His PR guy, the gorgeous Rob Allyn, will try to keep
Grandpa Jones behind the scenes, but that's not going to happen. Jerry
Jones' ego will not let him stay in the background -- no more than he can last
much longer with Bill Purcells getting all the limelight.
Jerry Jones is clearly a better businessman than Clint Murchison, Jr., but they
share a penchant for loose women and toddies. There is a "socialist"
streak that runs through many of the wealthy in this town. Must be why
Grandpa Jones left Arkansas for Dallas. If you have money you deserve
special perks. If you are working class, you should be grateful to watch
your superiors enjoy themselves at your expense.
Our Mayor exhibits that same attitude toward the middle class and working
people. We are to be controlled and cajoled, but we are supposed to accept
the fact that the moneyed class need more entertainment outlets than do we.
Whereas Joe Taxpayer should be content with a reasonable meal at El Fenix and a
movie or a mob concert, the ODB and their wannabee's need more extensive and
expensive entertainment -- opera, symphonic concerts, football and other sports
events that must be housed in expensive facilities funded by Joe Taxpayer and
come with high ticket prices intended to discourage riff raff like Joe Taxpayer
and his buddies from mixing with Our Downtown Betters.
This time out, the ODB are not a unified front supporting Jerry Jones' sales
tax.
For one thing, they don't like him very much. For another, Wick Allison
would not be opposing this stadium deal if his keepers were with Jones.
They know the impact the Hicks/Perot/Kirk tax has had on their favorite
restaurants. When the ODB has only a few high dollar dining places where
they can be seen, it puts a real crimp in their social life. Compound the
impact of Our Mayor's smoking ban on the restaurants with the threat of losing
all future convention business, Our Downtown Betters might actually have to eat
with the rest of us if they don't stop the Jones' tax. |
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John Willis
(5/4):
As I've said in previous responses, I live in Dallas County,
but I do not and would not live in Dallas.
JJ's upbringing is showing again
-- no class, no tact, greedy, self-serving and sneaky.
Again, I say let
him build his own playpen himself.
He has the money to do it.
What is a few hundred million dollars to someone like him?
As to the ODB
eating with the rest of us, if funding JJ's playpen
requires them to eat with Joe Taxpayer at El Fenix, then so be it.
Besides, where else will you find a better
cheap-cheese-enchilada-dinner-night? It would do them all good to wait in
line to have the pleasure of a meal shared with real
people. The rest of us might end up with
indigestion from the experience!
A sports facility is a vastly
different undertaking than a symphonic hall or a museum. The
symphony and museum are both public institutions owned by the people who
paid for them.
Taxpayer funding for a private
enterprise is just wrong. |
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Don't get lazy. We've got a tough row to hoe, but this time we have all
those smart people in the suburbs who will be voting AGAINST any sales tax for
Jerry Jones. Get in touch with Dave Capps at NoJonesTax.com.
For the time being, do what your cat does when necessary -- cough real deep and
upchuck that Cotton Ball right in front of that guy from Arkansas.
sb
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