Just Say NO to a Stadium in the City of Santa Clara - Just Say "NO Yorks" GO TO [ Documents that support saying NO Page] - [Handouts, Posters, Bumper Stickers Page]

MISSION:

This is a personal Web site whose mission is to oppose a stadium in the City of Santa Clara because there are much more important things to spend our money, our taxes, our city funds on, including roads, police and fire departments, services to children through seniors, sewers, libraries, and water supply. And we would be spending hundreds of millions of dollars of our money and our city resources (such as city-owned land and police) to benefit a family of sports billionaries. This money would be diverted from and be to the detriment of Santa Clara infrastructure and services to the citizens. I say no, and the community is organizing to say no. See the local, Santa Clara, Web site NotWithMyMoney.org and blog Stadiumfacts.org, for example. City officials, particularly in smaller communities, are often starry-eyed about snaring a major sports team. Some politicians think it will boost their city's prestige, be a tool to advance their own political or business careers (for example, council members who are realtors), or actually be of financial benefit to the community.

Unfortunately, the promised financial benefit of a new stadium to a community RARELY EXISTS according to virtually all economists and other scholars addressing the subject. This is also verified by the experiences of almost every city that has built a new stadium. See the references below (more to come), on the Field of Schemes Web site as well as the Santa Clara Web site NotWithMyMoney.org and blog Stadiumfacts.org The Yorks's empty, unsubstantiated promises and misleading data are no different than those claims made by other sports billionaires who have attempted to plunder a community's finances so as to minimize the risk to their own investments while maximizing profits. Again, see the references/articles that are noted below and on the linked pages. What do you want YOUR city government to do with YOUR money? - John Hogle, 22-year resident of Santa Clara Email:

For the residents of Santa Clara, what should come first?	Personal participation in sports is fun and beneficial and should be supported!	So, again, the important question for you to answer is:	Some groups who fought or are fighting predatory sports corporations (links)
Ensuring the quality of the infrastructure of the city (roads, libraries, power system, communications, police and fire departments, sewers, water, schools)? Ensuring that our students and adults get all the educational opportunities to achieve a better life? Ensuring that there is equitable housing opportunities for people of every income level? Providing recreational activities for children, youths, adults, and seniors, including in the sports, technologies, and the arts? Making sure our town is a safe and egalitarian one where eveybody wants to live? Attracting more high-tech and small businesses to keep the economic base of the city growing? Getting the homeless off the streets? OR Put hundreds of millions of City of Santa Clara dollars into the pockets of the sports corporation billionaries John and Jed York?	Thousands of Santa Clara residents participate in sports every week individually, in small groups, or in teams. Just go to almost any school playground or any city park. Exercise is good for us, and we should all participate in and encourage it. Our city offers many facilities for all kinds of sports and for every age. Will we still be able to provide so much if we are not tithing a lot of city money, our tax money to the Yorks. We do oppose corporations using subterfuge and deceipt to plunder our city coffers The goal of the 49ers and the York/Debartolo family and their corporation is to make money for themselves and their expensive sports entertainers (meaning millionaire athletes). It is to their advantage to spend your money, to make you take the risk, so that they can make more money with less risk. Look what happened, is happening in the relationship between the Raiders and Oakland! Do you want that to happen here? Do you want to pay more taxes to support a stadium to make the Yorks richer? Do you want to pay off bonds over decades to make the Yorks richer? Do you want the vital reserves of your Silicon Valley Power to be gutted to make the Yorks richer?	Do you want to be the financial patsies, the scapegoats of the self-serving plans of the billionaire Yorks? OR Do you want to keep YOUR money in YOUR city, making life better for all residents of the City of Santa Clara? Some of the Many Relevant Articles [CLICK HERE FOR MORE WITH EXCERPTS] All across the country, investigative journalists (locally, San Jose Mercury-News's Julie Patel and Mike Swift), economists, and other scholars have written articles showing the fiscal fantasies promoted by sports entrepreneurs and colluding politicians. Some examples: "The Stadium Gambit and Local Economic Development," (pdf file), Dennis Coates and Brad Humphreys, Regulation magazine, Summer 2000, 23:2 "Evaluating Subsidies for Professional Sports in the United States and Europe: A Public-Sector Primer," Robert A. Baade, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 19:4, pp. 585-597. “Economists call 49ers stadium forecast overly optimistic” San Jose Mercury News, Sec. 1B, April 10, 2007 AND FOR ADDITIONAL ARTICLES, SEE: Field of Schemes Web site for links. Additional links from this site	NotWithMyMoney.org (Santa Clara) Stadumfacts Blog(Santa Clara) Citizens for More Important Things (Seattle) Develop, Don't Destroy Brooklyn AND See the Field of Schemes Web site for more groups. An Important Book: The 1998 book Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money Into Private Profit details the efforts of sports corporations and other investors to plunder the coffers of communities and taxpayers as well as efforts to stop such predations. The Santa Clara City Library does not have it, but you can request a copy from another library through Link+. Go to the library site, search for the Title, then click on the Link+ button and follow directions. It should take only 2-4 workdays. An Important Web site Field of Schemes: http://www.fieldofschemes.com/ Co-author Neil deMause maintains a Web site for the benefit of all communities fighting predatory sports corporations. Some of the more important items on the Web site are: A list of Stadium Activist Groups Links to Stadium Economic Studies Two lists of the Top 10 dumbest Reasons to Build a Stadium (Stadium promoters really used these.)