Vikings Stadium Leadership = Getting Interested Parties to Work Together #wilfare
While some Vikings fans claim that state legislators, Governor Dayton, Mayor Rybak, or the Minneapolis City Council are showing a “lack of leadership” by not meeting Zygi Wilf’s corporate welfare demands as fast as they’d like.
Personally, I think questioning whether it’s in the public’s best interest to spend more money on stadium debt than stadium events would return to the public is a sign of leadership.
But, the real lack of leadership on the stadium issue is the poor job our leaders have done in convincing the Vikings, Vikings fans, and local businesses to work together to craft a plan that suits their needs. This lack of leadership can be seen in comments from fans like this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
In this case, it sounds like leadership could be defined as:
1. Enabling people to do what they want to do by staying out of their way.
2. Bringing Vikings fans, and local businesses and the Vikings organization together to find the money they need to build what they value.
3. Letting the market decide how extravagant a new stadium should be (if there is the financial will to build one once interested parties are faced with the true costs).
If Vikings fans and downtown businesses see enough value in the Vikings to support Zygi Wilf’s wallet, great. We don’t need to subsidize the Vikings or Vikings fans when the market is perfectly capable of deciding whether building a billion dollar stadium to replace our existing NFL stadium is justified.
