I continue to be amazed that taxpayer money might be allocated (without referendum) for propping up professional sports in Baltimore. This latest foray is for some proposed outdoor soccer sites to be examined in a $450,000 survey (for which the city kicked in $100,000) that is expected to be completed early next year. Hayes Gardner writes that that Baltimore is “one of the largest American cities to not have a professional outdoor soccer team” ( Aug.
8). What Gardner didn’t write was that D.C.
United’s average home attendance last season was 12,971 per game. Please remember that D.C.
United plays in a much more affluent area than Baltimore with about triple the population. Finally, Washington, D.C.
is still only about 40 miles from where I write this note. In my opinion, two areas this close could never support two outdoor soccer teams. D.
C. United’s 2023 attendance figures show that at 12,971 fans per game, that they are barely staying afloat. Does the team want competition 40 miles from where they do business? Usually, all pro sports teams fight tooth and nail to keep competition out of their area.
I am sick of special interests and pro sports that are being propped up by the residents of Maryland. There seems to be money for soccer stadiums and improvements to M&T Bank Stadium. Yet there seems to be little-to-no funding for the Baltimore Department of Public Works, where a worker literally burned to death from the inside out last week due to no hydration facilities on his job.
Also, there are reported woeful manpower shortages in the city’s police and fire departments. Plus, the decrepit buildings that Baltimore calls “schools” have a plethora of heating and air conditioning issues. That does not even mention the city’s crumbling and archaic infrastructure.
City and state leadership want to allocate taxpayer dollars toward “cool” sports stadiums to cater to the rich and beautiful people who mostly live outside Baltimore. I guess the needs of their constituency are trumped by the government’s burning desire for higher status. It is a true disgrace for Baltimore to even be considering borrowing money or floating bond issues for this folly! — George Hammerbacher, Baltimore.
