Well, we’ve waited to see what the grand plan to bring baseball Uptown would cost Charlotte taxpayers — you knew it would cost something — and it turns out the price is just too high. Not so much in absolute dollar terms, although $5 million is nothing to sneeze at, but by extending the suddenly acceptable notion that property taxes are optional.
The city of Charlotte is fast creating a two-tier system of taxpayers — one for average, workaday schlubs, another for the politically connected and powerful. Build stuff the Uptown crowd likes and you do not have to pay into the general fund to support the city’s basic functions — the proles pay for that. The Wachovia arts tower is the glittering $41 million tax dodge exemplar of this distinction.
Little surprise then that Charlotte Knights owner Don Beaver sees the Wachovia deal cruising past giddy local officials and concludes that he should not have to pay taxes on his $34 million baseball stadium. This wrinkle, by the way, answers the mystery question of where Beaver got the $17 million he didn’t have the last time Uptown baseball was under discussion. The several hundred thousands dollars a year in taxes the Knights would not have to pay the city can instead be used for debt service. Sharp, real sharp.
Charlotte public servants — if there are any left — need to understand just where they are steering the city. Even if basic fairness does not move them, the city’s long-term tax base is put at risk by these kinds of deals. They cannot continue.
Wait…this just in…last night the city council voted to give away millions in another tax-dodging subisdy for a developer to build condos and refurbish the Carolina Theatre.
We’re doomed.
Update: Tax records show that Bank of America Stadium throws off about $2 million a year in tax revenue for the city.
