This is a ‘last call’ for sanity on the Rays/Hines deal

As every pub crawler knows, when the bartender shouts “last call,” the right thing to do is straighten up and make good decisions — even when your dizzy, less responsible buddies are pressuring you to do the opposite. Thursday is the date for the definitive St. Petersburg City Council vote on the controversial Rays/Hines transaction, and thus the last call for sanity on that milestone issue.

Of the eight City Council members, it takes only four “no” votes to reject the deal, and three members have already signaled their opposition. It is now time for at least one more of the five to acknowledge how flawed the deal is, and rescue the city from a transaction poised to injure St. Petersburg for decades. The remaining five council members are Ed Montanari, Gina Driscoll, Brandi Gabbard, Deborah Figgs-Sanders and Copley Gerdes.

A lot has happened lately. Both Tampa Bay Times readers and the above five officials might benefit from an updated list of the reasons why we believe “no” is the only way to go:

Follow the money … as it leaves your pockets. If the Rays/Hines deal is approved, we calculate that the taxpayer subsidies and other costs to the city over the life of the project will approach $6,000 for every man, woman and child in St. Petersburg, money that would otherwise be available for essential city services and the salaries of the teachers, cops, firefighters and other city employees who deliver those services.

Location, location, location. The new Rays stadium is proposed for the same location that has produced abysmal game attendance for more than 20 years. Baseball in this location also failed to drive economic opportunities for South St. Pete residents, despite promises to the contrary. It is naïve to think a new smaller stadium will somehow do better. Almost any other commercial use of the proposed 22 stadium acres will produce more career-track jobs for local Black residents than pro baseball. With its baseball games, frequent rock/rap concerts and other uses, the stadium will produce traffic congestion, noise and potential fan misbehavior on more than 100 nights per year in the new Gas Plant neighborhood. The Rays/Hines say this will help attract prestige office tenants and affluent new residents to the expensive buildings they are developing next door to the stadium. Seriously?

Helping South St. Pete … stay poor. Mayor Ken Welch’s interest in helping his struggling South St. Pete constituents is no doubt sincere, but he has a funny way of showing it. As proposed, we think the Rays/Hines deal should probably be re-named “The Great St. Petersburg Reverse Reparations Scheme” for the way it transfers wealth from ordinary taxpayers and Black residents of the city to a tiny group that owns the Rays/Hines entities and already possesses spectacular wealth.

Who needs beaches? Pinellas County collected $98 million in “bed taxes” last year from county hotels and rental properties. This is the county’s primary fund for sustaining area tourism levels, and it is also used for beach renourishment, red tide mitigation and other tourism infrastructure that hundreds of area businesses depend on. Pinellas county has 35 miles of Gulf beaches, and 21 miles are presently classified as “critically eroded.” If the Rays/Hines deal gets approved, that fund will be raided for $20 million every year for the next 30 years to pay interest and principal on Rays’ stadium debt instead of being used to sustain tourism and beaches.

Voters? What voters? The city’s attempts to ram the Rays/Hines deal through without any direct voter consent are red flags for sure. Professional polling confirms that the Rays/Hines deal is opposed by a solid majority of St. Petersburg voters when polling questions include mention of the cost of the deal, and affirms that the more people learn about the transaction the more likely they are to oppose it. The city has also taken two other anti-voter steps on the issue: There will be no referendum that would allow voters to decide the fate of the Rays/Hines deal at the ballot box, and the city has exploited a clever loophole that allows St. Petersburg to borrow more than $300 million for stadium construction and infrastructure without customary voter approval.

Council? What council? The mayor’s office is disrespecting the role of the City Council, and that creates further red flags. Rays/Hines is arguably the single biggest economic decision in City Council history, and yet the council is working on a rushed timeframe, without a current appraisal of the site’s valuation, no independent financial adviser, no analyses comparing the Rays/Hines deal to alternative development concepts, incomplete documentation, no city or county initiatives to secure alternate stadium sites, and no real debate over the unprecedented zoning and development density proposed for the non-baseball parts of the site.

Help! Vocal public opposition to the Rays/Hines deal has been seen since late 2023, yet the Rays have been unresponsive and offered the city no meaningful improvements in deal economics. Thursday’s City Council vote is coming fast. Now is the time for alert (or simply thrifty) citizens to speak up. It only takes a minute at www.nohomerun.com/due-diligence to send the City Council a short email telling them to vote no.

Tom Mullins and Ron Diner are affiliated with the NoHomeRun.com group of concerned citizens. Both are also retired Raymond James executives.