Glendale forks over more money for Coyotes

((ht: azcentral.com))

When is enough taxpayer money enough?

If you are the city of Glendale, Arizona, apparently the answer is never. The city's leaders mysteriously approved $15 million from their utility reserves to help pay a $25 million holding fee/bounty to the NHL for their current ownership of the Phoenix Coyotes.

Can we just say this is the most vile misuse of public money for a sports team in history?

Yeah.

Apparently the utility money has been used before and the reserve fund, which is supposed to help maintain and improve service in the city is all but broke.

And according to the AZCentral story on the subject, half the members of city council are pleading ignorance, with one saying "I didn't pay attention as to where the money was coming from.

Read more from AZCentral.com RIGHT HERE

As much as we rail on tax money for improved football stadiums, that pales in comparison to what is going on in Glendale.

Yeah, we get the team or at least the former owner went bankrupt. But that should have been his problem...not the city's.

And yet it is.

We will say the NHL and city have tried selling the team. Twice. But those deals were so heavily leveraged, there's no way they would be long-term viable. The current deal with Greg Jamison is almost the same. The city is essentially going to pay him to buy the team. And defer most of the cost.

How are they going to get the loan. Because of all this, Glendale's credit rating has gone in the crapper, so they are going to have a hard time getting a loan to pay it off.

We've been told, the city keeps trying to keep the team there because of the investment in the Jobing.com arena and alleged shopping district around it. And they are on the hook for that too.

The question is when do you just cut bait? There are plenty of gazillionaire's in Canada who'd be glad to take the team off their hands. But the Bettman (Commish Gary Bettman) and the city keep saying no. Bettman doesn't want to be proven wrong, but he's playing with other people's money here.

And the charade just keeps going on.