Kansas City Chiefs

Royals, Chiefs await tax vote

Sports fans awaited the results of a vote on two stadium-improvement tax increases Tuesday that some warn could determine whether Kansas City remains a major league town.
The measures on the ballot in Jackson County were designed to raise more than $500 million to renovate Kauffman Stadium, where baseball's Kansas City Royals play, and Arrowhead Stadium, the home of the NFL's Kansas City Chiefs.
A three-eighth-cent sales tax would raise $425 million over 25 years to renovate the stadiums and add such things as a pavilion behind the baseball stadium. A separate user tax would generate about $200 million for a rolling roof that would make both facilities climate-controlled.
The teams' owners have pledged, together, more than $125 million toward the renovations. But arguments have raged for weeks over whether the Royals' David Glass and the Chiefs' Lamar Hunt were putting up enough of their own money.
During the run-up to the vote, the owners did not threaten to leave town if the measures failed, but they refused to promise they would stay.
A no vote would mean the Jackson County Sports Authority, the body that governs operations of the stadiums, would be in violation of a requirement in its lease that it maintain the facilities in "state of the art" condition. After Jan. 1, 2007, the Royals and Chiefs would both be free to leave.

Supporters of the tax increases pointed to other cities that have lost franchises beloved by their communities - Cleveland's Browns and Baltimore's Colts, for example - over basically the same issue, inadequate stadiums.
The NFL pledged to award Kansas City a Super Bowl in 2015 if the measures passed, and Major League Baseball said it would give the city an All-Star Game sometime after 2010.