Inexperience bargaining with billion dollar company-Downtown Hotel

The City only received one proposal to built the prerequisite hotel for another developer to build a downtown stadium. The single proposal places the inexperienced city workers in a weak negotiating position when dealing with the more experienced sophisticated billion dollars business tycoons.

Having only one proposal does not leave the city without any leverage, Leatherman said. If the companies are not flexible, the city could end talks and restart the search for a developer. But Leatherman does not expect that to happen.

The fact that the city is losing many jobs may place the city workers in a role of self-dealing at the negotiation table which is not in the best interest of the tax payers, who will partially be footing the bill for building this hotel.
The hotel has gone from 300 rooms to 250 rooms, and the cost from $30 million to $47 million.

The imbalance will become apparent, at the negotiation table, in the amount of dollars that will be taken from the local budgets from property taxes. Property tax dollars used to subsidy the building of the hotel in hopes of recapturing the value of the hotel building, innkeeper taxes, and sale taxes, later. More than likely the developers will receive a tax abatement reducing the about of revenue going back into the budget from the new investment in hopes of creating new jobs.

Small business owners are distracted with fighting a smoking ban, at this moment, while the city is negotiating away many of their tax dollars to support a single private developer. The diverting of their tax dollars to a single private developer will increase the amount of taxes their business will have to pay with the developers projects. The battle against the smoking ban must not service as a smoke screen by preventing these small businesses from paying attention to what the city is willing to give away to wealthy private investors who are not local that will harm them down the road.