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A city staff report issued during Tuesday night’s City Council meeting introduced for the first time a new funding option to pay for the construction of a downtown arena; benefit assessments.

Here’s a little legalese for those of you that may not be familiar with that term:

Benefit Assessments are used by local governments to pay the costs of providing fire
suppression, flood control and other services to a particular community. These charges are
based on the concept of assessing only those properties that directly benefit from the services
or improvements financed.

Assistant City Manager John Dangberg casually mentioned during his presentation that businesses which neighbor the new arena could be asked to pay a new tax to help pay for the construction, since they will feasibly benefit from its operations.

Neighboring businesses would have the opportunity to vote on the tax before it is implemented, but votes are weighed based on the size of the company.

The report also shoots down the hopes that the city will pursue a 100% privately funded arena, just as a minority Kings owner announces that he wants to do just that.

From the staff report which you can read below:

Although several teams in large markets have privately
financed multi-purpose facilities, a privately financed facility in Sacramento would not be economically
viable given the limitations of the Sacramento market.

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