Check this out.. The $1,500,000,000 (that's 1-point-5 billion) price tag on Yankee Stadium would cover the school budget for the city of Schenectady for the next 9 years, and that's without the proposed reductions.
For that, what do we get?
Well, if the money went to the school budget, the kids of the city of Schenectady would get to keep the 34 teaching positions that are on the chopping block. They would get to keep modified sports, the 1/3 of the athletic department that's facing the hatchet ("That will have a devestating affect on our program,"said AD Mary Ozarowski. "We're hoping something comes forward to save it"). It would also allow the pool the school built less then 10 years ago to remain open, a pool that serves not only the students, but also the community as well.
With Yankee Stadium, we get...
...ummm...
...ahhhh...
I've got it.. We get the opportunity to pay $2,625 for one ticket to a luxury suite. A price that Yankee general partner Hal Steinbrenner admitted today might be a bit pricey. By the way Hal, paying $9 bucks for a beer at the stadium is a bit pricey. 26-hundred for a ticket is flat out idiocy.
We also get stuck with a bill. According to the USA Today, the city's Independent Budget Office, a publicly funded agency that provides non-partisan information about financial issues, estimated the Yankees deal will cost the city $362 million. That does not include concessions the city and state made in building the parking garage and other infrastruture items.
Now to the Mets. Citi Field, which should(and might often) be called Bailout Ballpark, was a bargain at just $138 million to the city, according to the same USA Today report. Follow this now.. Citigroup will play $400 million over 20 years for naming right. You know, the same Citigroup that couldn't survive without a $45 billion dollar government(read:taxpayer) bailout. There's a real you paid for it.
Let's not be silly here and solely blame the Yankees or the Mets. They asked and they received. If anyone is to blame its the folks in Albany who continue to cower to the threat of team departure and hand over cash we really don't have to spend.
Time to step back a moment. I've been through all this before. I listened to the people of Rochester who said it was ridiculous to spend millions on a new ball park(Frontier Field) when the city schools of Rochester desperately needed things like textbooks and technology updates. Our return line everytime was, the money for ballparks etc. comes from a different section of the budget than education. This is the line we got from Albany and our representatives. It made sense too. If Rochester didn't spend it on a ball park, Buffalo would put it toward their waterfront project or some other city would build something else with it, but it wasn't going to education
The problem is with the system that allows all that money to go into a capital fund and not be transferred out to other places its needed.
That's what it's time to fix. How about we make New York's education system as much a source of civic pride as two cement structures.
Am I just not getting this? Let me know if I'm wrong. Post a comment or send me an e-mail to richbecker@fox23news.com.
