I’d love baseball to come to Portland and I quiver at the prospect of the disgruntled Florida Marlins coming to P-Town, but I’ve come around to the belief that the city/county/state shouldn’t fund the majority of the cost. In fact a token contribution in the way of helpful permitting or helping with road construction to facilitate cars and trucks get to the ball park are fine with me. But I don’t want to use public monies to build a stadium so “they will come.”

I want some owner to work a deal and buy his/her/their own doggone stadium.

We don’t have the money to spend on the stuff I want because we’re so busy spending money elsewhere.

Herewith are my 12 reasons why Portland, Oregon can’t afford baseball:
(feel free to add your reasons)

We don’t have $ for baseball because that $15 million dollar tram turned into a $40 million dollar tram.

We don’t have $ for baseball because we’re spending it on…The campaigns of the Portland City Commissioners who thought they’d impose this cost on taxpayers without a vote of the people.

We don’t have $ for baseball because we’re spending it on…helping the Portland Public Schools build a new school at the Columbia housing projects…even though private parties wanted to put a charter school there. For Free.

We don’t have $ for baseball because instead of $10,000 in property taxes that would have been paid toward schools, fire, police, and running the government, the buyer of that $700,000 downtown condo only has to pay $198 bucks.

We don’t have $ for baseball because we’re spending it on…Portland’s civic EGO in the form of the inefficient, 19th century, Lightrail system, that moves less than 1% of commuters…for $100 million dollars a mile.

We don’t have $ for baseball because we’re spending it on…chasing businesses out of the city with the business income tax.

We don’t have $ for baseball because we’re spending it on… the Wapato Jail. Oh, wait, we don’t have the money to open the Wapato Jail. Nevermind.

We don’t have $ for baseball because we’re giving WIC, food stamps, free education, free health care, driver’s licenses, and free housing to people who broke the law and came to this country illegally.

We don’t have $ for baseball because we’re spending it on…a green roof for the Portland building and the multnomah county building.

We don’t have $ baseball because we keep paying for the mistakes of people who hired Steve Goldschmidt…and fired the janitors…offended panhandlers and pepper sprayed wimpy protesters.

We don’t have $ for baseball because the big dog in town…the Blazers…don’t want the competition for your sports dollar.

And finally we don’t have $ for baseball because we’re still spending it on… the renovation of PGE Park the last time we sniffed pine tar in the air.