Councilman pushing $1 surcharge on pro sports tickets

[HMFFL]

Atlanta professional sports fans could pay more to see their teams play if a city councilman has his way.

Councilman Jim Maddox wants to tack on a $1 surcharge to tickets for professional sports events and major concerts held in the city.

The idea is to charge the fee on events held at large venues that seat thousands, such as the Georgia Dome, Turner Field, Philips Arena and the city-owned Lakewood Amphitheater.

The city is facing a $140 million budget shortfall, and Mayor Shirley Franklin has proposed a property tax increase to help fill the gap.

Council members spent the week in budget hearings looking for ways to avert an increase. Maddox pitched the surcharge idea, thinking the money could help defray some of the cost to have police officers work at the venues and for city crews to clean up afterward. Council members noted Atlanta has a $1 surcharge on city-owned venues.

"We need to at some point recapture some of these costs because we are in a [budget] crisis," Maddox, Atlanta's longest-serving councilman, said in an interview Thursday.


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[tbhawksfan]

Why should the consumer foot the bill? What about the owners and players who are making millions or billions off of the events.

[killbuckner]

Better this than a property tax increase.

[The_Floydian]

Why should the consumer foot the bill? What about the owners and players who are making millions or billions off of the events.

Your useless post have caught up to you. HMFFL

[dms269]

So I pay higher gas prices to go to the game, I pay higher food prices since groceries went up, now I pay higher ticket prices. Wow Atlanta, this is a brilliant idea.

On another note, there is no excuse for the city to be in the hole 140 million.

[lethalweapon3]

I'm not the biggest anti-anything-tax guy, but this here screams "NO" due to one of two likely things happening.

(A) The "crisis" (a big annual deficit) will never go away without major cost-cuts, so once the tax is in play it will never go away, either.

(B) If Mayor Sunflower (or the next mayor) and the Council do indeed fix this so-called "crisis," they'll discover what an untapped windfall this is and do nothing to get rid of it, and apply it to some other "crisis" (finding a way to pay local match for the new downtown train station, or some museum). Maybe even increase it.

Now if we really gotta do this kinda stuff, let's shift the incidence from a few Hawx and Bravos fans (mostly locals) to the conventioneers (the Amway and Primerica peddlers in particular) that take over downtown every weekend.

~lw3

[killbuckner]

I'd rather a voluntary tax like this where I might pay 20 extra dollars over the course of a year than an increase in my property taxes wehre I am already paying over $8500 a year.