Sorry, I did not get to this after I read it yesterday. I immediately passed out and smacked my head on the table on the way down.
Tim Newman, Charlotte’s tourism czar, cannot be serious about comparing Charlotte’s NASCAR Hall of Fame to Cleveland’s Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. It is utter madness. Cleveland is nothing to emulate. Let’s rewind to 2004:
The recent Census Bureau statistics are grim. A third of Cleveland’s residents live in poverty and jobs are scarce. Local government is broke and city leaders reduced to hoping residents pass a $68 million tax increase next month just to stop the bleeding. Police officers and firemen have been laid-off, teachers fired. Garbage collection is scaled back.
In sum, the basic functions of local government are breaking down in Cleveland.
…Taxpayers now face both state and local tax hikes to help provide basic services as yet more plans are drawn up for big public works projects that are supposed to magically reverse the dire trends. By every measure the steps that Cleveland took in the 1990s have not panned out.
So Cleveland’s woes are not new. Any well-informed public official has to know these long-standing facts about Cleveland. The hundreds of millions spent on the rock attraction, the light rail line, the sports complexes has not had the desired economic effect, and the rock hall has not even met original attendance projections.
And how are things going right now in Cleveland? Not so good:
Cleveland’s homicide rate was among the country’s worst in 2005. And so far, this year is shaping up to match last year’s bloodshed.
With 114 homicides in 2005, Cleveland had the United States’ 11th-highest homicide rate among cities with more than 250,000 residents. Cleveland averaged 24.9 homicides per 100,000 people.
In the first seven weeks of 2006, the city had 19 homicides, putting Cleveland on pace for another deadly year. Last year’s homicide total represents a 46 percent increase from 2004.
…
Cuyahoga County’s woes figure prominently in a new report that calls for addressing the growing needs of older suburbs.
In rankings of 64 U.S. metropolitan areas to be released today, Cuyahoga County suburbs finish near the top in percentage of elderly and near the bottom in how much the average home value has increased. Also, it has one of the highest percentages of old housing and lowest percentages of families headed by married couples.
All the millions spent on attractions, on tourism in Cleveland and basic quality-of-life issues persist. But there is much more, something that speaks to the awful treadmill cities hop on when they decide boosting tourism is a primary function of local government.
Cleveland has already moved on to the next great attraction, the next sure-fire thing to jump-start the local economy. Are you ready? Casinos.
Yes, real, live table gambling will be a cash machine for the city of Cleveland. Local government officials, downtown business interests, and the Greater Cleveland Chamber are flogging the casino solution. Sound familiar, Charlotte? Money from the casinos, maybe $500 million, would be used for — wait for it — education and economic development. Sound familiar, sentient human?
Voters still have to be sold on the casino idea, but the sales pitch is well underway. In sum, do not bet — ha! — against casinos in wonderful, archetypical Cleveland.
As you can see, the facts about Cleveland leave you dizzy. That Tim Newman would cite the mess that is Cleveland as a model for Charlotte kinda tells you all you need to know about what the NASCAR Hall holds in store for Charlotte. In sum, not very damn much. Sad to say, however, there does not seem to be any way to stop it. Park Helms has the votes to approve the deal next Tuesday night.
Here’s the only way the Mecklenburg County Commission should sign off on the hotel-motel tax to fund to Hall: Extract a pledge from Mr. Newman, Hall backers, and all the center city types that this tax hike is the last tax hike they will ever need. That they will not be back in a few years looking for a surcharge on tickets or parking spaces to make the numbers work for the Hall, the convention center, the arena etc. I willing to let the car rental tax hike for the Wachovia arts complex to stand or fall on its own merits, but if we are ever going to break the cycle of bad deals for Uptown, this is the only way to do it. No more good money after bad.
It is time for Uptown boosters to put up or shut up. If the NASCAR Hall is such a great catch, so certain to pay for itself, pledging to never ask for more taxes to pay for it should be easy. Let’s see that in writing.
Somehow I doubt it. Somehow I get visions of casinos…on Stonewall. It’ll be like, like Cleveland.
