I go back and forth on this issue. On one hand, it doesn't seem right that tax payers pay for a stadium and team owners make a profit from that investment. On the other hand, that is the name of the game and a city without professional sports team is pretty darn lame.
In true lumberjack fashion, Seattle is going to try to prove to the nation that this city is so cool, it doesn't need pro-sports. Starting with basketball. (Apparently football and baseball are needed. For now.)
Call me a tax-and-spend-liberal but infrastructure costs a lot of money. Schools, roads, sidewalks, mass transit, and sports teams - it costs money to build these things and that money comes from taxes. Moreover that infrastructure is what makes cities livable, even desirable. Despite popular slogans, you do get something from your tax dollars.
With the voter initiative system here, "the people" reverse themselves every year but the city council is deadset against the Sonics so this story may be over. Having moved around so much, Im not really a Sonic fan but it will still be weird to call them the Oklahoma City Sonics.
Why Seattle is losing the Sonics and Storm in 10 easy steps
Seattle Times staff reporters
November 14, 2006
The game-ending buzzer has all but sounded on efforts to keep the Sonics and Storm in Seattle. "There is really nothing left to negotiate with Seattle," a team spokesman said last week after Seattle voters came out 3-to-1 for Initiative 91, which would restrict public subsidies for pro-sports teams. Looking back, I-91 was only the final play in the political game that apparently will end in the teams' departure to the suburbs or Oklahoma.
