King County councilmember Dave Upthegrove spoke out Thursday against a proposal to give the Mariners roughly $180 million in public funding to spend on upgrades at Safeco Field.
The proposal announced Wednesday by King County Council Executive Dow Constantine would come from a hotel-motel tax that previously helped the team pay off debt on the KingDome. Constantine wants 12 percent of that tax’s revenue used on the Public Facilities District (PFD) boards that manage both Safeco Field and the ShoWare Center in Kent, something Upthegrove says is ridiculous given more pressing priorities within the region.
“The Seattle Mariners are a profitable private company that can and should pay their own expenses,’’ Upthegrove, who chairs the council’s budget committee, said in a release.