The Sacramento City Council voted 7-2 to approve spending $555,000 on the consultants for the new arena. The only decenting votes came from Sandy Sheedy and Darrell Fong. Sheedy said “a limit to what we can do in terms of funding an arena.” . . . “We are moving ahead with money that we can’t spend,”. While Darrell Fong wanted more outside involvement saying he had “serious concerns” that other local government are not spending any money on these consultants.
The money will be spent on lawyers, investment bankers, municipal financing consultants, parking experts, and other consultants. The consultants included firms like Barrett Sports Group.
City Manager John Shirey recommended hiring the consultants saying “we will be sitting down with people that really know their business.”. $375,000 of the $555,000 will come from the city’s general fund.
All of these funds are being spent to develop a plan to build and fund a new $387 million entertainment facility. All of this is in an effort to save the Sacramento Kings. The Kings have already said they will leave Sacramento if a new arena is not built. To date there is no complete financing plan to build the new arena.
I was disappointed by the recent vote to secure funds for a parking lot study. After the City Council/Mayor Johnson supported 60 businessmen to sell parcels of land belonging to the citizens to benefit Maloofs,the new arena and the NBA,this sellout is a double blow to Sacramento. As city parks languish,local Public Health is underfunded,services vanish,scools languish etc etc, the new area should not be the foremeost consideration to the City
Council and the Mayor. What is required is real leadership. We voted no before. This is akin to “manufactured consent” a term coined regarding the manipulation of business intersts and corporations to force consent on the public. The new area will not rescue us. It will place the community in a greater default.