Last year, the new owners of the Tampa Bay Rays were determined to convince city leaders to accept a $2.3B proposal by the team that called for a new ballpark and an entertainment district next to it. However, this project also required making substantial changes to the Hillsborough College campus that sits next to the Rays’ future ballpark.
Even so, the Rays wanted to make sure that the public knew that if the team was allowed to move forward with this project, little would change for students during construction. The Tampa Bay Rays CEO, Ken Babby, told a local radio station that students would not be displaced during construction. The team was moving forward on building a “temporary facility for the college” that would be up and ready for “classes in January.” Even better, the Rays publicly stated how there would also be “temporary teaching accommodations on-site as construction began.” Babby gloated in a radio interview that “these are some really nice classrooms” and that he added that interim parking would also be built for students and faculty. Babby then went to a college-wide meeting and told everyone that this deal would be “something great for students.”
Eventually, the city agreed to this project. At last, the Rays got their new ballpark. When will they start on these projects for the students? Yeah, about those charming classrooms…maybe the Rays won’t build them after all. A story was written this week by WMNF that recounts how students were previously assured that they would still be able “to learn on-site in a temporary facility.” Meanwhile, this week students and faculty were informed that “there will be no temporary educational facilities on campus after all.” Oh, and about those temporary parking lots that the Rays said they would build? There won’t be anything like that built. This means that “many (students) will need to park” outside of campus and “take a shuttle” to classes. After being told of these recent changes by the team, one tenured professor accepted that “promises were made, and those promises have been broken.”
This week, the Hillsborough College president, Ken Atwater, finally decided to speak to students and some faculty. Anyone who asked a question to Atwater was escorted by an armed guard to and from their seat. How did the meeting go? The media was, of course, not allowed to attend the meeting with the president. God forbid the public find out actual details about this project. However, WMNF found out that many students had plenty of issues with the president. One student brought up how it would take 40 minutes to drive from one possible temporary campus to another. Atwater gave no response. Another wondered whether tuition would be lowered after all of these headaches? Atwater said no. The president was also met with constant boos and numerous complaints about:
- The continued lack of answers on funding questions related to several big projects on campus
- The expected drop in quality of service by almost every student
- The utter lack of any communication with the faculty and students.
These days, the Rays CEO and Co-Owners refuse to even speak to anyone who mentions concerns about the lack of follow through by the team. This likely contributes to why students and faculty have gotten zero communication from the team. Instead, it is left to the media to tell them what is going on.
But to make matters even worse, it has been reported this week that the city has agreed to a community benefits agreement (“CBA”) with the Rays. In this agreement, the Rays are forced to do little except say that they made efforts to do small things for local citizens. Overall, the CBA has the city giving the team $80M of taxpayer money while the team is promising to give $21M worth of benefits to the city. As the Tampa Monitor wrote about the community benefits agreement, the deal “relies too much on the Rays voluntarily keeping their promises.” Additionally, there is almost “nothing in the agreement that binds” the team to follow through on team promises in this agreement.
As this site has written about many times, CBA deals are almost always finalized in a way that gives the sports team a lot of wiggle room. This wiggle room allows the teams to get out of paying any substantial money that is owed to the city or county.
Both WMNF and the Tampa Monitor had done a ridiculously good job trying to get their hands on everything related to the CBA. Let’s see what else can be found in the CBA:
- The team is promising to give the city $4.2M over the first five years. Considering the city is giving the team $80M from this CBA, the $4.2M figure doesn’t even cover one year of debt service payments.
- The last version suddenly included language about an “advisory-only committee whose council member the Rays approve.” What could go wrong with the team picking?
- The city intends to borrow at least the first $20 million of the $80 million. The Rays pay none of the interest.
- The team can change the “exact value of each contribution” and do so “without council approval.”
- The team made a substantial amount of changes just hours before the city was going to vote on the CBA. One council member stated outright that “she didn’t have enough time to review the proposal.” Thankfully, city council members were “only given a 15-minute recess to review the new version.” Think about that for a second. 15 minutes.
- This vote on the CBA was only done because a supporter of this ballpark deal was voted out of office in the last election, and he wanted to force this vote before he left office in several days. We have to love how politics works out for the local residents.
