Royals fans, don’t you worry now… all those empty relocation threats were for naught… The stadium vote passed.

Jackson Co. voters approved a 3/8 cent sales tax to pay for the bulk of renovations to the Truman Complex, which is comprised of Kauffman and Arrowhead Stadiums. The facilities will be made “state of the art” thus keeping the lease agreement from being broken by the County.

Here is how the final unoffical numbers came out as of early Weds. morning local time in Kansas City:

Stadium renovations
Yes 78,773 (53%)
No 68,519 (47%)

On the rolling roof… well, that vote didn’t pass. No Superbowl, or NCAA Finals, I guess for KC. All the same… Citians that are sports fans should be more than kind for the extremely grateful taxpayers that voted in favor of the deal because they thought that the teams might move. Fear will make people do that sort of thing, regardless of the fact that there are no relocation options out there at the moment.

Here’s how the vote went on the rolling roof (unoffical numbers):

Rolling roof
Yes 71,394 (49%)
No 75,315 (51%)

Now, let’s see how long it takes Commissioner Selig to award the All-Star game in KC (somewhere between 2010 and 2014) as promised.

Not surprisingly, the Royals’ ownership was elated at the news. As David Glass said:

“I always believed that it would [pass]. I have this belief that people ultimately do the right thing,” Glass said, pausing to talk to a reporter.

“And this is the right thing for Kansas City, and it is the right thing for Jackson County so I never doubted it. We never, ever thought about anything else or what else we were going to do. Kansas City will look back at this and, retrospectively, believe it was really, really a good thing to have done.”

To recap why this “was really, really a good thing to have done”:

• Sales Tax (3/8 of a cent over 25 years): $425 million
• Tax credits by the state of Missouri: $50 million
• Royals contribution: $25 million
• Chiefs contribution: $75 million

For those scoring at home that’s:

• Public Subsidy: $475 million.
• Owners: $100 million.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 at 9:27 pm and is filed under Baseball Insight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.