When it comes to city-owned facilities, we admit to a bias: We
think they should be city-run. City officials and city employees
are accountable to Morgan Hill taxpayers at regular meetings and at
the ballot box.
When it comes to city-owned facilities, we admit to a bias: We think they should be city-run. City officials and city employees are accountable to Morgan Hill taxpayers at regular meetings and at the ballot box.
Private businesses are not.
That’s why we’re extremely leery of two proposals for vague public-private partnerships for an outdoor sports complex planned for Condit Road next the newly built aquatic center. It’s not clear if these proposals are asking for city subsidies or to operate city-built facilities. Either way, it makes us nervous.
One proposal comes from the largely local group of partners called Coliseum. The group’s web site does not offer any indication that the people involved in the Coliseum have ever built or operated a facility like the one they are proposing for Morgan Hill. In fact, the biographies of the management team read like most or all have full-time jobs other than building this facility.
Coliseum backers have big plans for a 100,000-square-foot facility that would offer indoor soccer and lacrosse, multi-use fields, basketball and volleyball courts, fitness and weight training, a sports bar and restaurant, a juice and coffee bar, a sportswear and equipment shop, and even a rock climbing wall and skate park in the future.
The other proposal comes from Big League Dreams, based in Southern California, which has built sports fields near Riverside, in Cathedral City, Chino Hills and in Redding. The group constructs recreation league baseball and softball fields based on Major League Baseball stadium themes.
If these business opportunities are so fantastic, as their promoters contend, then why do they need city subsidies?
Why should Morgan Hill taxpayers foot any part of the bill for these private enterprises? If their business plans are so inherently profitable, then investors ought to be knocking down the partners’ doors and city funding should be bothersome and unnecessary.
We urge City Council to heed the warning issued by Parks and Recreation Commissioner Laura Hagiperos: “I can’t believe anyone is taking this seriously. I don’t think, with all the (capital improvement projects) we have, that the city can offer any kind of contribution. They want to run these private facilities with major contributions from the city, and it ends up looking regional and they end up charging memberships to people who helped pay for it through the city. And, when they can’t make it work, the city ends up as the landlord of a building.”
In addition to Hagiperos’ concerns, we also wonder why would the city would want to fund competition to existing and planned recreational facilities.
And what do city officials say to existing gym and fitness facilities, personal trainers, sports and clothing retailers, juice bars, coffee shops, bars and restaurants that currently operate in Morgan Hill without a city subsidy?
It strikes us as patently unfair on a multitude of levels.
Perhaps one or both of these groups can present compelling reasons for already-stretched-thin Morgan Hill taxpayers to subsidize their private business proposals, but we doubt it. We urge city officials to remove any rose-colored glasses the proposals’ backers provide and instead take everything they say with a large grain of salt.
Because city facilities should be operated by city employees accountable to Morgan Hill taxpayers, and public subsidies of private businesses ought to be offered only when there is a critical, clear and compelling benefit to taxpayers that can’t be obtained any other way.
