Yes on Dead Space
The San Francisco 49ers spent over 5 million dollars to sell the voters of Santa Clara on owning a stadium so they can tax shelter hundreds of millions of dollars. Some of the million dollar propaganda campaign was spent on hundreds of "Yes on J Yes on Jobs" yard signs that appeared throughout the city. Yes on jobs? A football stadium is only open a dozen days a year for five hours. "Yes on Dead Space" would have been more appropriate.
If the issue is jobs - the answer is not a billion dollar NFL football stadium
On the April 25, 2010 Channel ABC News 11:00pm newscast report on the Santa Clara San Francisco 49ers stadium, 49ers point woman Lisa Gillmor was shown saying that it was about "jobs, jobs, jobs". And that the stadium was a great thing for a bad economy. She knows that the 49ers polling shows that this is the biggest reason people are saying they will vote yes on the idea of the city of Santa Clara helping to pay for and then owning an NFL football stadium.
Can you pay the rent on
a stadium job? No. Can you make a car payment on a stadium job? No. A stadium job would be less desirable than a job selling
Christmas trees - it offers equivalent pay, but less hours. An NFL football stadium is almost never open. And only open a portion of the
day on the few days that it is open. It would be used 10 days a year for the
San Francisco 49ers and another 10 if the Oakland Raiders come. Throw in a concert, an international soccer game, a monster truck pull, and a
Christmas tree lot is still comfortably ahead in hours. When almost a billion dollars is spent you expect some good jobs.
Not part-time temporary low wage
jobs. Will most of the part-time temporary low wage stadium jobs go to Santa Clarans - the people of the only city paying for the stadium?
No, Santa Clara is much smaller than next door neighbor San Jose and is only one city among 15 in Santa Clara County, not to mention other
nearby counties. What would Lisa Gillmor say if one of her kids told her they were quitting their full time job or dropping out of
college in order to get a new
stadium job selling refreshments or taking tickets a couple dozen days a year? Her shriek would be heard as far away as the
stadium site - and that's a long way away. None of the current and
former politicians cheerleading a new NFL football stadium in the city of Santa Clara live in the neighborhoods near the stadium. The
neighborhoods that will be affected by the traffic, the noise, and the tens of thousands of fans celebrating victories and decrying losses
after games while leaving a stadium that will not have parking for the vast majority of them.
And the same problems that exist for stadium jobs exist for any jobs created as a result of the stadium - restaurant/bar/hotel - jobs. How many new jobs - that is - how many people would be hired by restaurants, hotels and bars in order to accomodate a stadium that is only open a few dozen days a year? It seems likely that they would just ask some of their staff - many of whom are working part-time already - to work additional hours. Stadium related jobs have an additional problem - anyone flying in to see a 49ers game doesn't have to stay in a Santa Clara hotel. They don't even have to stay in a Santa Clara County hotel. If they are coming to the Bay Area for a weekend, of which only 4 hours will be spent in a Santa Clara San Francisco 49ers stadium, they will likely rent a room near where they will be spending most of their weekend. Downtown San Jose, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, etc. People driving or taking mass transit to the game will have far more choices of restaurants in Mountain View and San Jose than they will in Santa Clara. Which is why stadium proponents will talk about a stadium benefiting the region - since Santa Clara is only a small part of Santa Clara County and the Bay Area. And yet Santa Clara is the only city that will pay for it, the only city that will be responsible for it's expenses, the only city that will have to issue bonds to pay for construction.
Reason #4 - Most stadium jobs will be part-time and low wage, the constructions jobs are temporary and fewer than 7% will go to Santa Clarans.
Will Kennedy speaks to
Santa Clara Plays Fair
(id SCvoter on youtube.com)
on Reason #4 of the
top 10 reasons
to Vote No on Santa Clara Measure J
Most stadium jobs will only be available a few days per year and will not be highly paid. Construction jobs will be available, but will only last 31 months. According to the economic report, 93% of construction jobs will go to non-Santa Clarans. That leaves only 90 construction jobs for Santa Clara residents.
Source: New 49ers Stadium Economic Analsis, CSL (49ers' consultants)
49ers multi-million dollar stadium campaign paying off - for SCU students and godaddy.com
The San Francisco 49ers and their paid allies have promised a lot of part-time temporary low wage jobs if a stadium is built in Santa Clara, a minority of which would go to Santa Clarans. Well, they don't actually call them part-time temporary low-wage jobs - they refer to them as full-time equivalent jobs. Bundling several dozen part-time temporary jobs into a "full-time equivalent job" is a good tactic, since it avoids pointing out the obvious problem of a stadium with regard to jobs creation - a stadium is almost never open, and only open for a part of the day. And it makes it easier to grossly overstate the amount of jobs. Not to mention that the jobs are at or close to minimum wage. You can't pay the rent on a stadium job. You can't even make a car payment on a stadium job. The math is not pretty: 10 dollars an hour times 5 hours a day, times 20 days a year means a stadium job would end up getting you a total of $1,000.00 for the year. Or looked at another way, a stadium job is equivalent to 2.5 weeks of a fulltime low wage job. Even taking the ridiculously optimistic "vote for it" projection of stadium proponents that the stadium will be open 40 days a year only raises the annual salary to $2,000 and the hours to the equivalent of four weeks of low wage work.
Nevertheless, the "full-time equivalent jobs" have begun (and going to mostly non-Santa Clarans as would happen with stadium jobs) even before the stadium is built. The San Francisco 49ers front group Santa Clarans for Economic Progress have been hiring Santa Clara Univerity students since January to help sell the stadium subsidy and ownership by Santa Clara to Santa Clarans. Their campus ad:
Santa Claran's for Economic Progress
Campaign Internships
We are looking for students who are interested in learning how a local campaign works.
Gain valuable experience and network with local activists. Previous campaign experience not required, but highly valued.
Requirements include ability to use basic word processing and spreadsheet software, work ethic, and willingness to work
outside of normal business hours. Interns will likely spend much of their time talking to the public and must also be flexible
in an ever changing environment. Some positions will be mostly in-office, some will require significant time in the field.
Please send your resume to mia@scforprogress.com and include: short statement why you'd like to work on this campaign, what
you hope to gain from this campaign, your hours of availability (any time between 9am to 10pm, 7 days a week), if you speak
any additional languages, and any other info you'd like us to know about you.
Interviews will begin soon and applications are excepted on a rolling basis. We expect internships to end around June 10, 2010.
Hopefully none of the SCU student workers are accounting majors, as they will become disenchanted if they see slide 48 prepared by city workers which shows with numbers that the stadium causes the city of Santa Clara to have less money if a stadium is built than if it isn't. And hopefully none are Sociology majors as they will become disenchanted once they see that the stadium is being built right next to a residential neighborhood.
It makes you wonder how much of the millions of dollars from the San Francisco 49ers are being used to hire "precinct walkers" that aren't Santa Clara University students?. We know that the people who collected signatures for the initiative were paid to do so. Are the precinct walkers all hired hands as well? Several million dollars does give you the resources to hire a lot of people. Isn't it strange though - the stadium is such a great deal according to the Stadium Five, and yet the San Francisco 49ers have to spend millions of dollars to get it sold. Since when do great deals have to be hammered down people's throats with lies and false promises?
The millions are trickling down and benefiting others as well - the 49ers front group has been
buying and activating some domain names through godaddy.com:
But they did forget this one: VoteNoOnJ.us. By buying up VoteNoOnJ domain names could the San Francisco 49ers be signaling that they realize they would be renting a stadium that has no parking, no BART, and no hope of making payments unless the Oakland Raiders share it - and are thinking about reversing course?
