The funding for the stadium comes from completely different sources than schools, health care, or the county’s general fund. That money could never be used for any of those things.

To answer Jon, money to cover the shortfall will not be taken from schools, in short it will be taken from people trying to buy houses…in the form of higher taxes. People in this city are going to have to decide if they want to maintain services like regular trash collection and pothole filling and pay a little more in taxes…or slide down a deep, dark hole and start to look a lot like a third world country.

What many of the Hispanic population here doesn’t understand is that America isn’t great without cost to us taxpayers. The government isn’t trying to steal our money or land like Castro or Chávez. Taxes fund our quality of life, and paying a little more is better than the alternative…a bleak, dirty county with even more people complaining.

All I’m saying is, 11 million is a pittance compared to what it costs to build a stadium. Perhaps if they cut out the extravagant VIP sky-boxes or scaled down the jumbo-tron a touch or maybe just a few less than 57 food vendors or SOMETHING there might be some money left over to fund hundreds of arts grants in Miami. It just seems wholly unfair that sports takes such precedence over culture that all the arts funding costs what Dwayne Wade or someone makes in half a season and we still have to fight for it.

Our forefathers would be ashamed.

As for no one giving a crap about the Marlins, attendance is routinely lowest in baseball, but you have to imagine that is due to stadium location. TV ratings are always top 5-7 in the sport, and that’s easily explained by the size of the Marlin’s home jurisdiction and culturally the large hispanic population who do love baseball. There is interest, but no one goes just because it’s a trek up (or down) from the turnpike. And who wants to do that after work. As for ‘player fire sales’ and the product on the field, as soon as the Marlins receive those aforementioned parking/concession/luxury box revenue, they will keep their players fixing the other half of the ‘who gives a crap equation,’ by people trusting in the franchise not to nickel and dime it anymore.

The current building plans are to create a whole ‘nightlife’ area around the stadium, so the city (and Marlins) can receive revenue year round and not just for the 81 home games. i.e., potential venues for local bands, larger national concerts like a U2 or Green Day so they don’t have to play up in Broward or Coral Sky/whatever it’s called now, etc. It might not be the indie rock crowd, but it’s going to help a lot of musicians and entertainers in the city. You also have to feel there will be widespread area gentrification starting in a year as developers rush to build things around the stadium, which is simply a huge anchor property for the city.

I’m all for a crusade to keep funding for local arts, but getting upset with the city for keeping a significant financial asset like the Marlins, which will probably help the music scene here in some capacity, isn’t really a legit beef in my eyes. My beef with the stadium is the location. It should be on part of the property of Bicentennial Park, Bayfront Park, old Miami Arena, where the new Wind/Ivy/Mynt Condominiums are just North of Tobacco Road, or somewhere else DOWNTOWN where there is a plot east of I-95. Regardless, this city does phenomenally stupider things. The baseball stadium should work out though.

At the very least it makes me physically ill that they want to spend even $1 on a new stadium for the who-gives-a-f*ck Marlins that already have a place to play.