Saint Paul 2008

It’s no secret, Saint Paul is strapped for cash, and has been for a while. Heck, everybody is. Saint Paul, though, wants almost $100,000,000 (yes, one-hundred million dollars) worth of loans they owe to the State of Minnesota (which is also broke, incidentally) forgiven.

The reason? Basically, because the Republican National Convention is coming to town in 2008. The city, which operates Rivercenter and the X, complains they can’t “give away [their] space or even discount it very much”, which they feel they need to do to maintain competitiveness with other cities, in terms of attracting large, revenue-generating conventions. Like, say, the 2008 RNC Convention, or the 2008 Figure Skating Championships.

Don’t get me wrong, it would be great for the city to, in effect, have more money on hand, thanks to not having to pay back these loans. But trying to use a large, potentially profitable convention they’re hosting as justification for needing to be more competitive in the convention-hosting field seems just just a tad disingenious to me.

More than likely, what it comes down to is this: The two 2008 conventions have the potential to generate a lot of revenue for the City of Saint Paul, revenue the city desperately needs. The only problem is, the City won’t see much if any of that revenue until 2009, and won’t be able to use much of it until the year after. While the primary, direct costs of the RNC convention are being subsidized, that really doesn’t do much for the city at large. Cutting 7 million dollars from the city’s expenses, while not a huge amount, would definately help - especially if the funding gets earmarked for something useful, like hiring public-safety personnel. If that happens, it’ll probably be the largest single benefit the residents of Saint Paul get from the conventions, directly or indirectly.