Letter to the Editor: City-owned arenas compete with many private businesses

Seven-thousand-seat arenas don't just compete against other arenas for the discretionary dollar. Every time a consumer makes a decision to spend a dollar at a publicly financed facility, it is one less dollar that consumer will have to spend at one of Springfield's thousands of privately owned tax-paying businesses. Ice rinks compete against miniature golf courses just as surely as arenas compete against movie theaters.

If the people of Springfield choose to spend our tax dollars to subsidize wealthy developers, then so be it. But to claim, as City Manager Tom Finnie does, that these government welfare dollars have no effect on the private sector competition makes no sense at all.

Steve Wiemer

Springfield