Omaha Doesn't Need a New Stadium

I’m tired of Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey dreaming up gigantic new buildings that will increase my taxes. First it was the Qwest Center, now it’s his idea to replace Rosenblatt Stadium with a new baseball stadium in downtown Omaha.

Ever heard of the Omaha Royals baseball team? Exactly. Now you may have actually heard of the College World Series, and Omaha has been host to the event for nearly 40 years. Fahey’s big motivation for the new stadium is to keep the CWS in Omaha. So they need a $140 million stadium to use 10 days a year?

Oh, but the Omaha Royals and Creighton Blue Jays would use the stadium, too. Well, then, they can chip in to pay for it. Furthermore, if so many people think it’s such a fabulous idea, then Fahey should have no trouble paying for the thing with private donations. I don’t really care what his solution is; I just don’t want my property taxes to increase yet another year, and frankly, I’m not keen on sales tax or any other tax increasing, either.

Nebraskans are already screwed with some of the highest taxes in the nation. That's what happens when a state has two somewhat large cities, a lot of small towns and a lot of uninhabited land used for farming. The more people living in a state, the lower the taxes; the fewer people, the higher the taxes. On top of that, Omaha likes to add its own ridiculous taxes, like the wheel tax. Instituted decades ago, the wheel tax was to be charged for a year or two so we could afford new roads and road repairs. It was $1 per tire, including your spare tire, so $5 per car. The wheel tax never went away, though, and now it's $7 per tire ($35 per car). Omaha has even gone so far as to force people who live outside city limits but within a certain distance to pay the wheel tax unless they can prove that they don't travel to Omaha more than two or three times a year.

The plan that makes more sense is to renovate Rosenblatt Stadium to meet the needs of the CWS. It just doesn’t make sense to build when you can renovate a perfectly good stadium — an Omaha landmark — for half the cost. Renovating Rosenblatt would cost about $73 million.

Several years ago, Fahey had the idea to build a giant convention center in downtown Omaha. His promise was that it would attract tons of conventions and big-name concerts, so many Omahans blindly followed him in this idea. I was a naysayer from the beginning. It’s Omaha, folks. You can have the biggest convention center in the country, but it’s still in Omaha. Moreover, just before Fahey started talking about building the convention center, the Mid-America Center went up in Council Bluffs, Iowa, just a stone’s throw away. So now we have two convention centers within 10 miles of each other.

For the most part, Omaha’s convention center stays empty. All those conventions Fahey promised us? Well, they’re happening somewhere, just not here. Some people refuse to criticize the Qwest Center because they say we’ve had big-name bands come through just because of it. Omaha has never been a key city for bands to play, not like Denver or Kansas City or Chicago. Hell, not even like Des Moines or Ames, Iowa. Sometime in the past, though, band managers figured out that they could make a little extra money by stopping in Omaha between Denver and Kansas City. They needed a rest stop anyway, and Omaha has good steaks. Unfortunately for concert-goers, these shows were always on the weeknights, never on Friday or Saturday.

And the difference with the Qwest Center? None. They still come through on weeknights. We got Bon Jovi a couple weeks ago — on a Monday night. Matchbox 20 played earlier this week — on Tuesday. I would rather drive two-and-a-half hours to Kansas City on a Saturday to see a band on a night when I don’t have to work the next morning.

Since the Qwest Center was built, concert ticket prices have increased, in addition to property taxes. I can buy tickets cheaper for a Kansas City show than for an Omaha show. Furthermore, the Qwest Center charges $5 so you can park and walk a mile, not exactly an enjoyable trek in a city with weather ranging from negative 5 degrees to 105 degrees. In eight years, we have had fewer than 10 big-name acts come through — Elton John, the Rolling Stones, Cher, the Police (coming this summer), Pink Floyd (I’m not sure this one counts as “big”) Bon Jovi. That’s all I can think of, but there are probably a couple more. People could have driven to Des Moines or Kansas City for those like we used to. What is that, maybe one big show a year?

With Fahey’s plan, the new stadium will be built on two of the Qwest Center parking lots. Although he claims the new stadium would not increase property taxes, he initially proposed a 2 percent “entertainment tax” on everything from hotel rooms to dinner at a restaurant to pay for it. Fahey later revised his tax idea and proposed that we raise the tax on hotel rooms and rental cars, thus sticking out-of-town guests with the brunt of the tax increase. However, under Fahey’s master plan, Omaha’s hotel tax would become the highest in the nation. Higher than New York. Higher than California. Higher than all the other fun places in the country.

I don’t know how Fahey thinks we can get away with charging the highest hotel tax in the nation. Omaha is a great place to live, but it's not exactly a tourist or vacation destination. We have a great zoo, and that's probably the only thing you can't find in other cities that have more culture, more shopping, more night life, amusement parks, etc. Furthermore, did Fahey forget that Council Bluffs — with several large casino hotels — is basically an extension of Omaha? In fact, the casinos aren’t even across the river from Omaha; they’re on the river. And you might as well rent your car there, too.

Fahey has all these other grand plans to pay for a new stadium, like a “seat tax” charged on baseball tickets. If you’re going to a baseball game and bought tickets, didn’t you already pay for your seat? What a maroon.

Fahey has proceeded with these stadium plans without anyone’s permission or blessing. Yesterday he proposed the stadium plan to the CWS. The idea needs to be put to vote. If Omahans are so gung-ho for that new stadium like Fahey believes, then he should have no problem putting it to vote. The thing is, the majority of us are against building a new stadium and want to renovate Rosenblatt.

I understand that the CWS brings money into Omaha, but if the NCAA officials are going to be assholes and demand a brand new stadium, then maybe they should take their demands somewhere else. A brand new stadium could hurt Omaha’s CWS income: Smart fans will take their hotel and rental car business to Council Bluffs, and that means they’ll also spend money in Council Bluffs on meals, gambling at the casinos, and maybe even shopping. Oh, and gas is cheaper there, too, so that’s where they’ll be refilling their gas tanks.

Dog People and Cat People

There are distinct differences between people who like cats and people who like dogs. They act like cats or dogs. The good thing is that dog people usually don't slobber or sniff a guest's crotch, and cat people don't crap in litter boxes.

My friend C— is a dog person. Not only is her preference for dogs, but she also acts like a dog herself.

She doesn’t drool or lick her crotch. But she is very friendly. She’s nice to everyone, and she won’t pass anyone in the hall without saying hi. She is loyal, and she gives everyone a fair chance, even when her friends warn her about someone.

She is always willing to help someone, even if she doesn’t particularly like the person or helping sets her back on her own work or activities. She can’t say no; her weekends, and often her weeknights are filled up with social activities, volunteer work and helping friends. Sometimes, she says that she wishes she didn’t have to go to this party or doesn’t want to go out with so-and-so. When I point out that she doesn’t have to, she can cancel or better yet not accept so many invitations, she mumbles, “I know,” but she never changes her ways. Some of this is due to the fact that she overextends herself; some of it is that she has a great sense of obligation.

I also work with C—, and our cubes are next to each other. Because she can’t give anyone the cold shoulder or nonverbal clues that she doesn’t care for them, her cubicle attracts every annoying person at the company. And she just talks to them, and lets them ramble on about their insipid lives. God forbid they come by with good gossip or anything worth hearing. They’re always complaining — about their breakups, their divorces, everything that’s gone wrong in the last week. It would do her good to growl at a few of them sometime.

Dog people get so excited to see someone they haven’t seen in a while, you almost wonder if they piddled. Dog people also tend to be tolerable of disorder and mess. They clean their houses only when necessary, mostly because they’re always out playing. Dog people are also the ones most likely to greet their spouses at the door in the evening.

I’ve known many dog people, and they all have these same basic qualities.

Cat people, on the other hand, are quieter than dog people, we like quiet and we’re not people people. We don’t trust people, and we spend a lot of time observing other people to determine whether we like them. Cat people are aloof and walk down a hallway without paying attention to who we pass.

Then there are the people we don’t like from the start. We tend to growl and hiss at them until they take the hint that we don’t like them and go away. We don’t fight like dogs; rather, we tend to end the argument with one quick swipe of our verbal claws, which sends our opponent yelping.

We like our sleep, we enjoy naps and we are content lying on the sofa for an entire day. We don’t need to be surrounded by people to be happy, and we don’t particularly enjoy meeting new people; we’re like our small group of close friends whom we trust. Large groups of people make us want to run and hide under the bed.

We are finicky, and we want things our way. We like our surroundings to be in order and neat. We don’t like disorder. And we really hate change. We are also clever and we can be sly, and we enjoy getting into mischief once in a while. We're more daring than dog people, willing to attempt activities like bungee jumping, skydiving or drag racing. (Dog people don't like to try things that may kill them.)

Don't expect a cat person to greet his or her spouse at the door. We don’t want to constantly be touched, and we want affection on our terms. For these reasons, it’s best for cat people to have romantic relationships with other cat people. Although we can tolerate dog people as friends, we tend to become irritated with their constant doting and affection and need for attention. They just don’t know when to leave us alone.

Moreover, when it comes to pets, many cat people won’t allow dirty, smelly dogs in our homes, which can be a real disappointment for dog lovers. We don’t want the commitment of having to walk a dog or finding someone to care for the dog when we take a weekend getaway. Essentially, we want a pet as independent as we are.

I don’t have an earth-shattering point to this. I just think it’s interesting that we tend to favor pets that have similar personalities to our own. I suppose this is disturbing news for people who prefer reptiles and fish as pets.

Update (3.16.2010): As this is one of my most popular posts, you might be interested in this article from Psychology Today in February 2010.  It seems lots of people are interested in the differences between dog people and cat people.