Screwing the Commons and All Things Civic
Just caught a piece of rage-inducing news: a Washington State House bill proposing selling naming rights to elements of public transportation to raise money. As he almost always does, I think Goldy says it best:
Personally, I'm opposed to selling the naming rights on state bridges and highways because I think it cheapens the commons and reinforces our irresponsible something-for-nothing political narrative. . . .
Exactly. The presence of commons is a necessity to a functional civic life. We all need places we can gather where we are more than targeted consumers, where we participate in public life apart from the needs for individuals - be they naturally born or formed through legal fiction - to engage in the truck and barter of their commerce and the agenda attendant thereto.
I'm not adverse to people naming what they build; what seems to be happening more and more is the construction/remodeling of civic institutions by one group, who later sells the naming rights for as much as they can. Seattle's football stadium might be the third most expensive at $75 million for 15 years, but that proves a bead of sweat compared to the $430 million it cost to build, quite a bit of that chunk of change backed by taxpayer-funded bonds.
There are a few problems with this whole naming rights fiasco. First, glean from the CLF Wiki that the stadium is next to the WaMu Theater, named (using the same procedure) by the now-defunct Seattle-based bank Washington Mutual. The bank is gone, but we are stuck with the name. Hey, it could be worse for us. In Boston, their opera house is named for a computer company that hasn't produced a named product in decades.
I've got a possible solution to this ongoing train wreck. We as citizens need simply to define how much the public must receive from the namers in return for the sacrifice of our civic spaces. We as a state should simply define what percentage of a structure's construction/remodeling cost the namers must present before the naming rights goes to them. I'm thinking 2/3 of total construction and ongoing maintenance costs sounds fair. In fact, I think I'll be contacting a legal friend to see how we might draft this proposal into a State-wide initiative.
What do you think?
Personally, I'm opposed to selling the naming rights on state bridges and highways because I think it cheapens the commons and reinforces our irresponsible something-for-nothing political narrative. . . .
Exactly. The presence of commons is a necessity to a functional civic life. We all need places we can gather where we are more than targeted consumers, where we participate in public life apart from the needs for individuals - be they naturally born or formed through legal fiction - to engage in the truck and barter of their commerce and the agenda attendant thereto.
I'm not adverse to people naming what they build; what seems to be happening more and more is the construction/remodeling of civic institutions by one group, who later sells the naming rights for as much as they can. Seattle's football stadium might be the third most expensive at $75 million for 15 years, but that proves a bead of sweat compared to the $430 million it cost to build, quite a bit of that chunk of change backed by taxpayer-funded bonds.
There are a few problems with this whole naming rights fiasco. First, glean from the CLF Wiki that the stadium is next to the WaMu Theater, named (using the same procedure) by the now-defunct Seattle-based bank Washington Mutual. The bank is gone, but we are stuck with the name. Hey, it could be worse for us. In Boston, their opera house is named for a computer company that hasn't produced a named product in decades.
I've got a possible solution to this ongoing train wreck. We as citizens need simply to define how much the public must receive from the namers in return for the sacrifice of our civic spaces. We as a state should simply define what percentage of a structure's construction/remodeling cost the namers must present before the naming rights goes to them. I'm thinking 2/3 of total construction and ongoing maintenance costs sounds fair. In fact, I think I'll be contacting a legal friend to see how we might draft this proposal into a State-wide initiative.
What do you think?