You are reading

Queens Officials Want Sports Arenas to Pay More Taxes to Help Economic Recovery

Citi Field (Wiki)

Sep. 3, 2020 By Michael Dorgan

Queens Council Members Costa Constantinides, Jimmy Van Bramer and Antonio Reynoso are among a group of elected officials who want New York sports arenas and franchisees to pay more taxes to help the cash-strapped city get through the current economic crisis.

Nine city council members–including the three from Queens– have called on the governor and mayor to demand that arenas pay property taxes once fans are allowed back into sports stadiums.

The council members said that the sports arenas and franchises have benefited from an unbalanced tax system and have paid little into city coffers – despite relying on public services like mass transportation to help run their organizations.

As a result, they said, the city has lost out on billions of dollars over the past number of decades that have could have been spent on education, sanitation, and other public services.

The lawmakers penned a letter on Aug. 24 that was sent to Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio calling for tax laws on sports arenas to be amended.

“For far too long, this City has given a free pass to our beloved teams when it comes to property taxes, out of fear they’ll somehow pack up their bricks and beams and head across the Hudson River,” the letter reads.

The lawmakers wrote that the city can barely collect $9 million to save the New York City Community Schools program or make up the $106 million slashed from the Dept. of Sanitation due to recent budget cuts.

“We can’t fall for this bluff anymore,” the letter reads.

“This is an opportunity to prove these teams truly care about the schools they send players to visit or are invested in the mass transit they recommend people take to the game.”

The lawmakers recommend that the State Legislature repeal the 1982 tax break on Madison Square Garden. They said that this allowance saved the arena from paying $41.5 million in taxes for FY 2019, citing figures from the Independent Budget Office.

They also called on the city to renegotiate the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) agreement with Yankee Stadium, Citi Field, and the Barclays Center. PILOTS are payments paid to government in place of taxes, usually property taxes. Currently, the stadiums pay PILOTs for the construction debt they owe.

The lawmakers said that all New York institutions should pitch in and pay their share to help with the economic recovery.

“We love our teams, but we love our constituents more. When the economy goes bust, it’s our duty to provide services the private sector cannot,” they wrote.

email the author: news@queenspost.com
No comments yet

Leave a Comment
Reply to this Comment

All comments are subject to moderation before being posted.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Recent News

Scooter-riding robbers sought for gunpoint chain-snatching inside Woodhaven playground: NYPD

Police from the 102nd Precinct in Richmond Hill are looking for a scooter-riding armed robber and his accomplice who allegedly held up a 25-year-old man at gunpoint in broad daylight at a Woodhaven playground late last month.

The incident occurred just before noon on Wednesday, Sept. 25, when the two strangers rode a two-wheeled scooter onto the basketball court inside London Planetree Playground on Atlantic Avenue and approached the victim. One of the perpetrators pulled out a firearm and forcibly removed two gold chains from the victim’s neck and $100 in cash, police said. The bandits rode off northbound on 89th Street toward Jamaica Avenue. The victim was not injured during the encounter.

Flushing man busted for pushing an 82-year-old woman off the platform at the Main Street 7 train station in Wednesday: NYPD

A Flushing man was arrested Monday and charged with attempted murder for allegedly shoving an 82-year-old woman onto the tracks at the Main Street 7 train station during a random attack on Wednesday, Oct. 2.

Brandon Harris, 35, who lives directly across the street from the bustling subway station, was booked at the Transit District 20 headquarters at the Briarwood subway station in Jamaica on Monday.

City completes $106M sewer project in Maspeth using micro-tunneling techniques to reduce disruptions

The city announced on Monday the completion of a $106 million infrastructure project in Maspeth, the second of three phases to create a new drainage system through central Queens. The project also upgraded over a mile of water mains and replaced smaller, local combined sanitary sewers.

The city’s Department of Design and Construction managed the project for the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Transportation and successfully used micro-tunneling technology throughout large parts of it to minimize construction impacts during work.