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chainsaw

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Everything posted by chainsaw

  1. The tourist taxes (hotels and entertainment, i believe) play a role but it's not clear to me what the role is. Something about servicing bonds? This sort of ties back to the opposition's point: we have no clue what we're signing up for, maybe we should get an independent economic assessment. And maybe it's kind of suspicious how much pushback that simply doing due diligence is getting. Like a car salesman getting mad about the customer asking for Carfax. Does it mean it's a bad deal? Not necessarily, but it doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
  2. Honestly I don't like discussing Project Marvel in this thread. I want ridiculous Wemby clips and seeing Dylan Harper / Carter Bryant hype. HEB commercials.
  3. When the gameplan is simple, and Arch doesn't have too much to think about, he makes his throws. When Sark insists on overloading his brain with complicated, slow-developing MENSA horseshit, his mechanics suffer and his aim suffers. That is the most plausible explanation for Arch's performance. The OU gameplan allowed Arch to do what he does best. The UK gameplan did not. If Arch transfers somewhere else, and the HC/OC lets him hang his nuts low, he is capable of winning a Heisman. Sark is very clearly trying to make Arch into something he is not. That is dumb, and having a shitty OL makes it worse.
  4. I'm not a construction guru but it's been my understanding that a TIRZ is a special district with special tax incentives that state law creates. The idea is to attract spending on projects that will benefit the local economy. https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/development/prop-tax/ch311/about-tirz.php The tax on the "before" values (low, SHSU football team quality) will still go to the city (county, school districts, etc), but the tax on the "after" portion (high [Bama quality] minus low [SHSU quality]) doesn't go to the city (or other taxing entities) anymore, it goes to into a separate piggy bank that benefits the developers only. The rules of the piggy bank can be fast and loose, too. In 2035, you could see palatial developments all over downtown, but the city's tax revenue from those palaces will be the same as the revenue from a condemned shack full of heroin addicts, because most of the appraised value of those palaces is going to be taxed under the TIRZ deal and most of the money will get diverted into the piggy bank that the city, county, school districts, and other taxing districts can't touch.
  5. No (companies can train their own goddamned technicians) No (we should be able to raise money however we need to in the future) No (don't micromanage judges, better to let 99 guilty men go free than 1 innocent man be jailed, yada yada) Yes (see @Brisketexan post above) No (only benefits a few people who are probably Abbott's friends so fuck 'em) No (we should be able to raise money however we need to in the future) Yes (drop in the bucket for our budget but huge for the worthy beneficiaries) No (we should be able to raise money however we need to in the future) No (only benefits a few people who are probably Abbott's friends so fuck 'em) Yes (drop in the bucket for our budget but huge for the worthy beneficiaries) No (close call, but it hurts school districts at a time they can't afford to be hurt) No (judges should not get a slap on the wrist if they're bad) No (close call, but it hurts school districts at a time they can't afford to be hurt) Yes (drop in the bucket for our budget but huge for the worthy beneficiaries) No (meaningless culture war bullshit, doesn't belong in the constitution) No (don't enshrine racial dogwhistles in our constitution) No (don't enshrine racial dogwhistles in our constitution and we sure as fuck don't want to burden the state budget either)
  6. Is it time to fly a banner?
  7. Reading comprehension. I said "Kentucky played about as well as they possibly could" I did not say "Kentucky played well"
  8. I've seen enough football to know the script of some games. Yesterday was a classic Underdog Outplays and Outperforms the Favorite, Gets Multiple Chances to Win, Loses in Heartbreaking Fashion games. I won't go so far as to say I knew we were going to win all along. I felt the pit in my stomach that we were going to lose. But I never felt like our team was less talented or victory was totally out of reach. Kentucky played about as well as they possibly could, but they made one mistake and that's all it took. They should have fully capitalized on the opportunities we gave them, and they didn't. I actually expected Mark Stoops to fake the FG at the end of regulation and hit a wide open receiver for the go-ahead TD. That's the kind of night it was, until it wasn't.
  9. I have a feeling we will look better at Miss St, but Miss St is not terrible so an improvement might not be enough to win.
  10. The impact is that, if we're being bullshitted (because the guarantees in the term sheet aren't actually targeted at the immediate geographic vicinity of the proposed arena) then a bunch of wealthy people will get to make a lot of money without paying their fair share of taxes. It's the same problem with UT announcing a scholarship fund for poor kids, but the fine print of the scholarship fund has a bunch of loopholes that allow rich kids to qualify. Everyone supports scholarships for poor kids! Nobody should be against that! The problem is whether what we're being sold is different from what the actual deal is. To bring this back to your question, the city would unnecessarily lose out on substantial sources of tax revenue for decades, so the only way to balance the budget would be to cut spending (much easier said than done in the age of police and firefighters unions) or to raise taxes on everyone else. The term sheet I want to see should have firm financial commitments instead of "trust me bro, we promise to build all this stuff" and it should include binding geographic, time, and use restrictions on what construction activities qualify and what activities don't qualify, as well as key performance indicators of this project so that the people who stand to gain from this share in the risk and are held accountable if the promise of revitalization isn't kept. Right now, it feels very Simpsons Monorail Episode and is more or less holding hostage the community's love of the Spurs with the implied threat of moving the team somewhere else. It's a fucked up thing for the ownership group to do, and it's a fucked up thing for Gina Ortiz-Jones to risk having done to the city. In the end, I don't think the owners would leave the city without trying to put a better offer on the table. If a better offer is made, then in hindsight Gina will have been smart to call their bluff and save the taxpayers millions if not billions over the years.
  11. https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/middleeast/100000010468254/gaza-strikes-israel-ceasefire.html
  12. If the Hemisfair TIRZ is expanded, you're looking at the potential for a forever loophole for private developers to spend $1.4 billion on projects virtually anywhere in central SA, without any mechanism of accountability. Nobody to blame if the promise of revitalization goes unfulfilled. The argument is that the private developers were going to spend this $1b, regardless, and should not be given a tax break that was intended to incentivize deals that otherwise wouldn't have been made. Those projects need to be taxed. https://www.sacurrent.com/news/cityscrapes/cityscrapes-project-marvels-open-ended-term-sheet-will-cost-every-san-antonio-property-taxpayer/ Here are some more concrete problems: The only specific development commitment outline in the document calls for “a boutique hotel meeting the NBA’s requirements for visiting teams.” The $500 million doesn’t have to come just from the Spurs. It can also come from unspecified “private developers.” Same thing with the balance of $900 million. Not necessarily from the Spurs, just from “private developers.” They could be any developer building in the area defined by the term sheet. And that area doesn’t have to be in the immediate vicinity of the new arena, convention center and the Alamodome — defined as the “sports and entertainment district.” The Hemisfair TIRZ goes from Commerce Street to the north to Lavaca Street beyond César E. Chávez Blvd. to the south, from I-37 on the east all the way to Navarro Street on the west. and its boundaries could change in the future (and City Council has a history of changing them since the TIRZ was first conceived in 1999) The term sheet also doesn’t define when the period for the new development starts. Would it include the longstanding but unrealized plan for converting the former CPS Energy headquarters on Navarro to a hotel? the estimated $750M for the city’s plan for a new convention center hotel on the site of the SAWS chilled water plant between Commerce and Market Streets?
  13. Graham Platner is badass af and I want him to be the next Senate majority leader
  14. I must have missed the Wisner injury. Was it the fumble at the endzone?
  15. Just run the ball. That's all they need to do. How fucking stupid are you Sark???
  16. Back in the day it'd've been swept under the rug
  17. I'm glad you didn't have to watch the semifinal last season
  18. Sark is so stupid. Just run the goddamned ball
  19. Ballgame. 23-21 Vaqueros lose
  20. "they called that pass incomplete" no shit
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