Council OKs change to Las Vegas charter barring stadium funding

By Conor Shine

Published Wednesday, March 18, 2015 | 2:53 p.m.

Updated Wednesday, March 18, 2015 | 8 p.m.

The Las Vegas City Council voted today to add language to the city charter barring public funding for a soccer stadium at Symphony Park, preempting a vote on the issue on the June election ballot.

It is possible all the races in the municipal election will be decided during the primary in April, and putting on a general election in June to consider only the stadium question could have cost up to $1 million.

The council voted 4-0 to adopt the language, with stadium supporters Mayor Carolyn Goodman and council members Bob Coffin, Steve Ross and Ricki Barlow voting in favor.

Council members Bob Beers, Stavros Anthony and Lois Tarkanian abstained from the vote because they filed the petition initiative and had a conflict of interest.

The council’s decision has the same effect as if voters had approved the ballot question, meaning no public funds can be used toward building a Major League Soccer stadium downtown at Symphony Park now or in the future.

Goodman, Coffin, Ross and Barlow voted in December to approve a package worth $100 million in city funds and land to help build a $200 million downtown soccer stadium that would host a professional soccer team.

Beers, Anthony and Tarkanian opposed the public subsidy and in January, they launched a petition initiative that gathered 6,966 valid signatures to put a question on the ballot blocking the funding.

The issue lost momentum in February after Major League Soccer told the city it would not be receiving an expansion franchise, effectively scuttling the stadium plans.

“Why would we waste any money on going to the public...The issue is dead; we weren’t given a franchise,” Goodman said.

The proposed stadium, however, still lingers as a campaign issue, with Anthony launching a bid for mayor to unseat Goodman because of her support for the project.

Coffin and Barlow also have drawn challengers looking to use their support for the stadium against them.

Stadium hunt costs city $3.1 million

In a separate stadium-related item, the council received a report on the costs the city incurred during its five-year partnership with developer Cordish Cos. in an attempt to build a stadium or arena at Symphony Park.

The city's cost totaled $3.1 million, largely coming from $2.5 million the city put into a planning fund for the project.

The costs also included $543,585 for various consultants related to the project, $9,600 in land appraisals and $11,093 in travel costs for trips by city staff and officials to Portland, New York City and Baltimore while pursuing the soccer team bid.

About half of those costs were covered using money the city had already set aside in the planning fund.

Anthony, who requested the report, criticized the spending, saying "it looks like the only people who won on this are the consultants."

Several council members who supported the soccer stadium pushed back against Anthony's criticism, arguing that although the soccer stadium failed, it should be considered as part of the broader effort to redevelop downtown with new projects.

Altogether, the city has invested about $450 million in downtown redevelopment projects like the Mob Museum, the Neon Museum, the Smith Center for the Performing Arts and various grants to small businesses, helping generate $455 million in additional private investment in the area.

"I think we've gotten a good return for our money," Coffin said, adding that many private investments wouldn't have happened in downtown without "encouragement" from local governments in the form of incentives.

Stadium failure opens up funds for new uses

With the stadium plan scrapped, the city council now must decide what to do with the roughly $6.7 million per year it had planned to bond to help pay for the project.

The stadium plan called for the city to issue $50 million worth of bonds, half of which would go toward the stadium and half toward park projects in the city's older neighborhoods.

The bond would have been paid off using the roughly $6.7 million the city receives annually as its share of hotel room tax collections.

Without the stadium, the city can devote the full amount to parks and recreation projects and today, the council received a report on their various options.

The council will have to consider how large of a bond it wants to issue, it could be from $25 million to $50 million, and how long the bond would be for, from 10 to 20 years.

The city has identified 23 park and recreation projects in need of a combined $99 million in funding, ranging from repairs at aging structures like the Charleston Heights Arts Center and the Doolittle Community Center to the construction of new parks in Wards 1, 3 and 5.