I hope Eva would be willing to provide some explanation of her statement that the Twins have negotiated in bad faith with St. Paul. Most accounts I have seen are that it's St. Paul that has been screwing around with the Twins.
They wanted exclusive negotiating rights. They have not settled on a site yet and so don't know how much site preparation will cost. The bill passed by the Legislature caps the amount of public financing and expects the Twins to cover shortfalls, which is fine, but when you have a team for sale, it kind of makes it harder to get interested buyers. Urban construction sites are often in need of things like pollution cleanup and the like. St. Paul cannot provide any kind of estimate for these things because they don't even have a site chosen yet. At least Minneapolis/Hennepin County had one site picked out, knew how much it would cost to prep and quite frankly, it's a better site than any of those proposed for St. Paul. Here's my hope: the Twins keep on winning and clinch the AL Central, making the playoffs for the first time since 1991 and bringing thousands of fans downtown to recreate the glory days of the late 80's and early 90's. Perhaps that would have a galvanizing effect to get the public-private partnership needed to get a real workable ballpark solution. I agree with those who say Minneapolis or St. Paul can't and shouldn't go it alone. What the Legislature did last session was a total copout. Hopefully with all the retirements after this last session and if we're all really, really lucky, a few key defeats in the elections this fall, we can get some legislators who are willing place working for a real solution above screwing over the Minneapolis delegation. The proposal from the Ventura administration had it right: state financing (not funding, those most folks still can't get a handle on the difference), location selected by a panel after being judged for parking/transit capacity, sewerage infrastructure and other structural needs, and bond repayment based on private contributions (by the team and corporate sponsors) and user fees, not taxes that hit the locals and leave the rest of the state off the hook. It's too bad this couldn't have been done as an executive order to keep the collective grubby hands of our pathetic excuse for a Legislature out of it. Mark Snyder Windom Park [EMAIL PROTECTED] On 7/12/02 10:37 AM, "Eva Young" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > With the way the Twins management have negotiated in bad faith with St > Paul, I can't believe anyone would trust them with a 10 foot pole. > > The private market would support a good investment. Clearly baseball isn't > a good investment or the private market would have stepped up to the plate > by now. > > Go Saints. Just say no to extortion. > > > Eva > Eva Young > Near North > Minneapolis _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
