A $65 million regional recreation and sports complex: A ballot albatross? Or voter magnet?

Aug. 25—ROCHESTER — Is a proposed $65 million regional recreation and sports complex an albatross that could doom efforts to renew the city's local option sale tax? It's a question up for debate for city leaders and residents.

When

Rochester Mayor Kim Norton recently issued a veto for a plan to extend the city's sales tax extension,

she highlighted what she regarded as the proposal's weakest link: a sports complex where several questions still abound.

Norton preferred the public have the option of voting on the four projects individually, based on their individual merits, rather than lumped together in a single question. The

Rochester City Council ultimately overrode the veto, voting 6-1 to keep the four projects in a single package.

Rochester voters will ultimately decide the fate of the half-cent sales tax extension in a Nov. 7 special election.

To Norton's mind, the recreation complex wasn't ready for prime time. There were still key unanswered questions: Where would it be built? Who would run it? Who would benefit? What would the final price tag be? Norton felt that not enough "up-front work" had been done to determine this was a project the community wanted.

"It was an amount that had been decided on, but not what the project was, where it would be and who would run it," Norton said. "Because of that, to me, it makes it vulnerable in the public's eyes. I didn't want to lose other projects because of it."

Stroll around 125 Live, a social and fitness facility built with $12 million in sales tax dollars, and you find a number of people who find merit in Norton's reasoning. Linda Hanson, 74, said she liked Norton's idea of separating the questions out individually, so voters could decide for themselves what Rochester "needed" as opposed to "wanted."

"I do think there are a lot of people that would want a sports complex," Hanson said. "I'm not one of them. I agree it's a want, and the public should be able to say, 'Yes, I want to spend the money on that,' or 'No, I don't.'"

Darrell Brown, 90, was waiting his turn at the pool table at 125 Live. Being a sports fan, Brown said he could support the idea of a sports complex "as long as they don't go overboard."

"It's an awful lot of money, but that's what it is nowadays. I guess I would support it," Brown said.

The vote seeks to raise $205 million through an extension of the city's half-cent sales tax. The money would fund four projects. In addition to the sports complex on a 90-acre site, $50 million would be spent for a regional economic development fund, $50 million for street reconstruction projects and $40 million for flood-control and water-quality projects.

The city hasn't done any polling to suggest how popular the projects are, but the 40-year history of the sales tax gives reason for optimism. Voters have yet to turn one down.

First approved by voters for a major flood control project in 1982, the tax has been renewed three different times, in 1992, 1998 and 2012.

It has paid for a host of improvements and projects, spurring growth in infrastructure, cultural amenities and educational and civic services. It helped build Mayo Civic Center, the Rochester library, a fire station and city hall; it supported the renovation of a downtown mall into the home of the University of Minnesota Rochester.

The sales tax also reshaped the campus of Rochester Community and Technical College by making possible the construction of health science and regional sports buildings. The Career and Technical Education Center on the RCTC campus was built with sales tax dollars. Voters approved the last extension by a 65% to 35% margin in 2012 and it will have raised $139.5 million when it expires.

Far from seeing the sports complex as the proposal's Achilles Heel, there are those who see it as just the opposite. It is the eye-catching, crowd-pleasing item on the menu, the magnet that will motivate people to vote.

Rochester City Council member Shaun Palmer, one of the six to override Norton's video, said he can easily imagine how some voters might rationalize why not to vote for the other, more humdrum projects. Flood control? There hasn't been a flood in Rochester in 45 years. And more money for roads? Don't I already pay for roads with my taxes?

But the Rochester community, he is convinced, will see the value of an array of basketball, volleyball and pickleball courts and multi-purpose turf fields — an unparalleled expansion of city's sports infrastructure that will not only benefit families but resonate with economic development potential.

"And we can have tournaments come into town on the weekends, when our hotels aren't as busy," Palmer said. "And that's an added benefit to Rochester. We can get more sales taxes from our hotels."

"All four are needs," he added. "We need to have more sports facilities. If I was a betting man, the sports facility would pass" and the others would not.

He argues, moreover, that a ballot with four separate questions would have been confusing to voters, because the language for each question would be nearly identical. Each question would ask voters for a 0.5% sales tax increase. Some voters might conclude, wrongly, that the passage of all four projects would quadruple the sales tax to 2 cents rather than half a penny for every one dollar of taxable sale. It wouldn't.

Palmer also says not naming a potential site of a 90-acre complex makes financial sense. Buying property for the facility can't happen until the extension passes. If it were announced in advance, any savvy property owner would see the chance to jack up the price.

"We probably have three or four locations that would be phenomenally good for Rochester," Palmer said.

He said that the city would use a Request for Proposals to solicit candidates to run the facility, just as most of them are run in the U.S.

"125 Live could bid on it and say, 'We're going to run it.' Or the YMCA of the North could come down and say, 'We're going to run it.' We don't have in our head how it's going to be run — probably not by our Parks and Rec Department. An RFP is the route that we've talked about."

Yet advocates for extending the sales tax face a short runway to sell and promote it. The special election is three short months away. While there is talk of a citizens group forming to campaign for the sales tax renewal, there haven't been any community meetings so far.

That's different from the way the 2012 renewal was handled. Back then, Jerry Williams, retired Rochester Public Schools superintendent, was the chairman of a task force that not only shaped and molded the plan that went to the voters but held more than 100 public sessions with clubs, nonprofits and businesses selling it to the public. A forum was held to debate the pros and cons, with former state Rep. Fran Bradley representing the "no" side.

Sports complex advocates say that, this time around, the community has been engaged in a number of ways — through surveys, outreach events and focus groups — to learn and provide input about a new sports facility. Overall, there have been more than 3,000 interactions and more than 15 engagement events, city officials said.

Officials say different models have been used over the decades to develop sales tax projects. Sometimes a citizens committee, appointed by the mayor and council, takes the lead, as happened in 2012. Other times, city administration plays a more dominant role with community input. But at the end of the day, it's the city council that is the final decision-maker.

Williams said he doesn't consider it fatal to the sale tax renewal that questions continue to surround the sports facility. He points out that 125 Live and CTECH were largely concepts before voters approved them. The details were filled in later.

"We never had final plans for 125 Live when that passed. We never had the final plans for the building of the CTECH center," Williams said. "And both were the top head-nodders of the 10 items in that sales tax ballot question."