May 15
2022
Monday Morning Read
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Below is the “What I’m Reading” section of Jim Heaney’s WeeklyPost, which is delivered via email each Sunday morning. The newsletter is free; if you’re not a subscriber, you can sign up here.
The Buffalo News reported on the cost of personal seat licenses to purchase season tickets to Bills games at the new stadium. A figure of $1,000 a ticket was bandied during negotiations to determine how stadium constriction costs would be divvied up. With that decided, the Bills floated PSL charges through a fan survey, and they’re a lot more than $1,000.
PSLs for upper end zones seats can be had for under $1,000, but most seats in the stadium would fetch considerably more. From the chart published by The News, it looks like many PSLs will go for $7,300 each, and swanky club seats will cost up to $16,500.
Ouch.
Revenue from the PSLs will go to the Bills to help cover the team’s $350 million portion of stadium construction costs. The News story did not say how much the PSLs will generate, but my back-of-the-envelope math suggests the Pegulas will recoup most, if not all, of their investment. Which means they could essentially get the stadium for free.
Federal largesse in the wake of the pandemic has left many state and local governments fat and happy. That’s certainly the case here in New York, where Gov. Kathy Hochul is throwing around money left and right in an effort to buy support for her election campaign. In Buffalo, Mayor Byron Brown has proposed spending more than $100 million in pandemic aid over the next two budget years without fixing the structural deficit in the city’s budget.
Roswell Park patron and business partner Roman Abramovich isn’t the only Russian oligarch who has been trying to buy respectability in the United States.
Does this strike you as humane? New York prisons are in the process of banning family members from mailing packages of food and clothing to their loved ones behind bars. And forget about bringing a care package when you visit. Instead, packages must be shipped via a third-party vendor, no doubt at a high markup. A report from New York Focus.
The fossil fuel industry is pursuing projects that amount to “carbon bombs” that would worsen climate change.
The former editor of ProPublica has a novel idea for daily newspapers: prioritize coverage of their communities.
Some neophytes wrote last week that Bob Lanier put St. Bonaventure on the basketball map. Actually, Bona was a powerhouse well before the Big Cat arrived on campus, thanks to the Stith brothers, among other greats. But Lanier took the program to its greatest heights and elevated the university’s profile in the process. Jerry Sullivan, still the best sports writer in town, summed up Lanier’s career – and life for the Niagara Gazette.
