Starting with Exploit 74, downtown property owners have conned the taxpayers into spending several hundred million dollars to try to prop up their property values since they can’t come up with anything to attract people to their businesses downtown that they are willing to pay their own money to do.

Now they want to grab another $31 million from taxpayers to put a new stadium in a location where there is little parking and huge other parking demands. And these people are pretty much anti-government and anti-taxes until they come begging to taxpayers.

All the local publicly funded event venues I’ve heard of require large taxpayer bailouts. How much are the present facilities costing us - they are used very few days of the year before COVID? The new stadium will also probably be used well less than half the days of each year, like the Arena and Opera House, I suspect.

Right now, between Post and Division from Main to First, there is extremely little to attract anyone downtown outside of weekday business hours. This is the fault of the property owners, not the taxpayers, and won’t change with a stadium on the north bank Fixing this can only be done by the property owners spending their own money to get new attractions in their buildings, like the Cowles, Mitch Silver and Walt Worthy have done in SW downtown.

Quit expecting the taxpayers to always bail you out!

Eric Johnson

Spokane