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Little Caesars Arena (Photo on flickr by Rick Briggs)
I was watching the 11 o’ clock news Thursday night and saw a report about lawsuits challenging the use of $34.5 million in taxpayer money to fund the Pistons' move to Little Caesars Arena this fall.
Then I watched a report about a woman living in Detroit’s Grandmont neighborhood in northwest Detroit, who was complaining that her burglar alarm company called Detroit Police when there was a break-in at her home while she was away, and it took officers about 4 hours and 40 minutes to respond.
Police said they had higher priority calls.
Let’s talk priorities. Do we want to live in a city where police respond more than four hours after a break-in in progress?
Would it be better to spend tens of millions of dollars on more police and better technology to make the city more livable, or do we need to give that money to billionaire sports team owners?
It’s obvious.
Secretive Deals
What’s also obvious is this whole process of giving $34.5 million in taxpayer money for the Pistons move has been so poorly executed. Frankly, it’s been shady and manipulative. There have been secret meetings and assumptions from the get-go that the funding was a done deal, even before citizens and the city council had time to weigh in.
Mayor Duggan, Chris Ilitch, Tom Gores at Pistons press conference (Deadline Detroit photo)
What's clear is, the two billionaires, Gores and Ilitch, could easily dip into their pockets to pay for the Pistons move. If not, at least let the residents of Detroit vote on the matter. It's not as if taxpayers aren't already helping out.
To date, around $250 million in taxpayer money is going for the arena.
To get a sense of how presumptuous the city and the Pistons have been, let's start from the day of the press conference announcing the Pistons' move last November.
On stage at the press conference at Cass Tech High School was Pistons owner Tom Gores, Mayor Mike Duggan, Christopher Ilitch and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver.
Amid hoopla and giddiness Mayor Duggan put a brief damper on things by blurting out a little surprise factoid: The deal to use the $34.5 million for the Pistons' move is only preliminary.
That surprised NBA Commissioner Silver, who looked a bit puzzled and said it was the first time he had heard the agreement wasn’t assured. Yes, even Silver looked surprised, as he should have been.
Duggan explained that city council still had to approve taxpayer backed bonds for $34.5 million to pay for the changes in the arena to accommodate the Pistons. But he and Pistons owner voiced confidence the proposal would go through.
Subsequently, community activist Robert Davis, sometimes referred to as a serial litigant, filed two federal lawsuits to prevent the funding from going through without approval of the taxpayers. Davis insists the taxpayer money is earmarked for schools and parks, and the voters should have to approve the expenditure for the stadium. Certainly the schools could use the money.
A federal judge in Detroit on June 20 shot down Davis' request for a temporary injunction to block the Detroit Downtown Development Authority from spending $34.5 millions in public funding to move the Detroit Pistons from Auburn Hills to Detroit, saying a delay would cause significant damage to the city. Right after that, the Detroit Council approved the funding 7-2. Davis is still pushing in court to block the funding.
In an eight-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Mark A. Goldsmith said Davis wasn't likely to win his suit based on the merits, and the granting of the temporary injunction would not merely delay the Piston move to the city, but likely cancel the plans entirely and "cause a ripple effect of lost business revenue in the district for years to come."
"The loss of anticipated commercial activity connected to the Detroit Piston’s downtown presence would be regrettable, but the loss of the city’s hard-won creditworthiness caused by defaulting on existing bond obligations would do catastrophic damage to the status quo," Goldsmith said.
Scare Tactic
First off, the Gores and Ilitch organizations reportedly had been putting up money to make sure things move forward while the funding is pending. That's precisely what they should do.
To pretend that all would fall through if the funds weren’t forthcoming is hogwash. It's a scare tactic the arena folks are using. Besides, Gores is worth $3.3 billion. He recently bought a $100 million mansion in Los Angeles. The Ilitch family is worth $6.5 billion. They can dip into their pockets or get a loan. I'm sure they're credit-worthy.
Let's not pretend Gores is making the move solely because he's a Detroit booster. Young people with money are moving into the city. Detroit is the place to be to make money, and he knows it.
The bottom line is, if Mayor Duggan, or Adam Silver or Christopher Ilitch, or Tom Gores had to wait more than four hours for the cops to show up to their Detroit home for a break in, or they had to send their children to some of the underperforming city schools, they too might want the stadium money to go to something other than the Pistons’ move.
