City will pay through the nose even if stadium stinks

(By Scott Sexton, Winston-Salem Journal) - Three men jostled over one newspaper early Friday morning. The numbers screaming from a huge headline caused their jaws to collectively drop: an additional $15.7 million in public assistance to finish the baseball stadium downtown.

"You'd think the city would have had a better financing plan in place up front before it got to this," said Ed Mayfield, one of the men sharing that paper in the Café Roche Coffee House.

He was upset about the plan cooked up by city officials (led by Mayor Allen "Moneybags" Joines) and Billy Prim, the owner of the Winston-Salem Dash, to use the city's good credit rating to finish what can only be described up to this point as a debacle.

The details -- a $12.7 million loan taken out by the city, another $2 million from a federal grant officials don't actually have in hand yet, and another $1 million to finance the purchase of city-owned land -- don't matter that much. (Remember, that's on top of the $12 million the city kicked in up front.)

That number could have been $22.7 or even $32.7 million, and city officials would still OK it for one simple reason. They can't afford not to.

"To put that kind of money into it and have it come to this, they have no answers," said Clay Hipp, another of the head-shaking trio. "People's reputations are on the line. Egos, too. They have to do it."