Why Oakland, Alameda County aren’t clamoring to keep the Raiders

[KamaAina]

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Why-Oakland-Alameda-County-aren-t-clamoring-to-6281780.php

Raiders owner Mark Davis and his colleagues at the NFL might have to wait a long time to hear from Oakland and Alameda County on a plan to help finance a new $900 million stadium.

That’s because elected officials are in no hurry to help the team close a $400 million funding gap, partly because taxpayers in Oakland and Alameda County are still paying millions of dollars a year for the Coliseum renovations that lured the team back in the mid-1990s. And that debt won’t be paid off until 2026....

If Davis was looking for public subsidies to help pay for a new Oakland stadium, he may be out of luck. The Raiders announced plans in February to build a $1.7 billion stadium in Carson (Los Angeles County) along with the San Diego Chargers. But the announcement did little to create a sense of urgency among East Bay civic leaders....

In Alameda County, Supervisor Keith Carson offered this opinion when asked whether he would support public funding for a new Raiders’ stadium: “If my income has gone down, and my housing costs have gone up, it doesn’t make sense for me to go out and buy a new car.” And, he added, it definitely doesn’t make sense to buy a new car “if I’m paying an existing car note.”

[Jamaal510]

1. I thought about this for

a while, and as much as I hate to say it, it might be the right thing to do to just let them go (again) instead of giving in to extortion and corporate welfare. The Raiders are a business just like other sports teams, so they should pay for their own stadium. Same thing with the A's. They already charge us to get into their games and for merchandise. The least they could do is show the type of loyalty in return that Oakland fans have shown them through all of the down years. They're lucky to have any fans show up to their games at all.