Mike Johnston the mayor and the City Council have decided to build a stadium from scratch for the Women’s Soccer franchise that Denver was recently awarded.
Today they announced that workers will have to take two unpaid furlough days this year since the city have a revenue shortfall. Oh and this is after the city decided not to give the high-level bureaucrats a significant raise because of the massive blowback they got on it.
I know Denver can’t have a mayor worse than Hancock, but dammit if Johnston isn’t trying.
Update: the 2 are set. There are another 4 floating days. So Denver workers have 6 unpaid days this year but on the other hand can watch women’s soccer starting in 2028.
I’m completely sympathetic, but this is pretty much the norm everywhere in government, be it city, state, or federal. Oh look, we’re going to create a new complex which will generate jobs/tourism/taxes (almost always heavily exaggerated) but we can’t afford to improve the local schools/roads/infrastructure without more taxes from you worthless citizens.
Heck, I’d go further, and say it’s endemic to the corporate world as well. Years ago when I did tech support for a major carrier, we were seen as a massive money sink, because we generated LOSSES in terms of our pay or replacing faulty phones, and didn’t generate or collect money! What a colossal waste when you are looking at nothing but spreadsheets!
Glad to see they didn’t vote themselves the raise at least.
And Denver is still better than Colorado Springs local government!
[Wanders off to mutter about excessive military pandering.]
This is more of a matter of the City of Denver not collecting enough revenue to cover their costs.
And it’s not an uncommon thing- every city of any size that I googled is facing a budget shortfall for the 2025 and 2026 fiscal years. It’s a combination of inflation (rising costs), decreases in property values for high-value commercial properties (i.e. downtown areas), and the absence of COVID related Federal funding.
Your mayor in Denver may suck, but he’s not facing a particularly unique circumstance.
Earlier in my career, the more short-sighted execs grumbled about IT costs because we were a “cost center”, meaning that we didn’t generate revenue directly. As if we didn’t enable and enhance every department that did, and enable all the corporate communications and accounting, and all that other jazz that companies have to do in order to stay in business. Nope, we were something to gripe about because we didn’t make money in our own right.
While this is true, it does look like the City of Denver is putting $70 million into “redevelopment costs” for the site. Since the budget shortfall for the year is $50 million it does seem reasonable to assign blame for the shortfall (and thus the furloughs) on the costs associated with the soccer team.
The point is if you have an estimated $250M shortfall over the next two years and your employees need to take unpaid days off, why is any money going to building a stadium?
OK. But that still wouldn’t mean I would know who you’re referring to. I’m afraid I don’t follow your posts meticulously enough to be aware of something you may have brought up a week or a year ago.
Why not just explain who you’re writing about? Failing that, at least include their first name as a tantalizing clue in the always appreciated “Guess Who I’m Thinking Of!” game.
I saw the same thing in my job. Worse, if we did our jobs correctly everything worked and the C-Suite wondered what the hell they were paying us for? If things broke, the C-Suite wondered what the hell they were paying us for?
That’s almost certainly not next fiscal year, and I’d guess would be funded by bonds, not the general fund.
Anyway, the larger question is why they’re so eager to fund a women’s soccer stadium of only 14,500 seats? We already see that municipal investment in pro sports facilities almost never actually pans out, and we’re talking NFL and MLB stadiums here, which are far larger economic engines and four or five times the size of women’s soccer and the proposed stadium.
I’m not trying to bash women’s pro soccer, but I’d question whether it specifically is a good investment for any city.
That was my first thought upon reading the thread title “OF COURSE Football (I mentally translate from the heathen) is more important than people, when was that even in question?”
“Denver,” “mayor,” and “Hancock” were all the clues needed to solve this one, given a willingness to expend even a minimal amount of effort and do a Google search.
ETA: If not clear, I get the sarcasm, and am giving an example of it going wrong in the same metro area.
The city I’m in, just north of Denver, decided that the sunk cost fallacy exists, and demolished their event center/sports arena in 2024. After $60 million in bonds, of which they still owe $34 million. The best choice was to knock it over and redevelop the whole area. They never made a profit on it, and keeping it open just cost even more money.
I’m sure back in 2004, or whenever the bonds were voted on, there were all kinds of promises about how much money it would generate for the city. Maybe if instead they’d spent some of that money on infrastructure our water/sewage rates wouldn’t have doubled to catch up on deferred maintenance.
