The Miami Heat play in a publicly subsidized arena that opened in 1999, and have a 30-year lease that doesn’t expire until 2029. They’re asking for about $66 million in future subsidies to fund renovations they want to do to their arena; Mayor Carlos Gimenez has been negotiating with the team, which like most negotiations involves a lot of staring each other down across a table.
So, naturally, the Miami-Dade County Commission has voted unanimously to undercut their guy by telling him to hurry up and make a deal:
On Wednesday, the commission voted unanimously to direct Mayor Carlos Gimenez to sit down with the Heat, whose executives are seeking a 10-year extension of the deal that lets the team play at the arena and receive about $6.5 million a year in hotel taxes to subsidize operations.
The agreement doesn’t expire until 2029, but the Heat has been trying to capitalize on its back-to-back championships to extend the terms until 2039 in exchange for a significant upgrade to the 14-year-old arena.
“They’ve gone back and forth, but things have not finalized,” said Commissioner Bruno Barreiro, who sponsored the measure “to bring an ending to this.”
“Don’t worry about ‘Should we make a deal?’. Just do it because we’re sure that this will be the deciding factor in LeBron’s decision.”
Local politicians, always in a race to out-stupid each other.
“Stupid is as stupid does”
I didn’t know that “Forest Gump” was about the Miami gov’t