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…They collectively cost more than $370 million to build, need millions of dollars a year to operate, and won’t hit their stride as community attractions until after the 2010 Olympics. But venue officials say the Whistler Sliding Centre, Richmond Olympic Oval, and Vancouver Olympic/Paralympic Centre have already injected millions into their local economies. Sliding Centre General Manager Craig Lehto said that at least $1.3 million was pumped into the economy when international teams trained at the centre over 22 days in October and November. The $61,000-a-day estimate includes money spent on food and lodging and does not include car rentals and other discretionary spending…

…These can’t be the rosiest of times for Oakland A’s co-owner Lew Wolff. His battle to find a new home for his baseball team continues, with no obvious end in sight. Discontent grows among the A’s fan base, with the perception being that the organization can’t wait to bolt Oakland for greener pastures. And the A’s are trying to snap a string of three losing seasons in an American League West division that is getting stronger across the board. But Wolff, 73, is optimistic that the team is pointed in the right direction. That was abundantly clear during a phone interview Tuesday afternoon with the Bay Area News Group…

…For the first time, the Minnesota Vikings say they would support a new stadium — one with a roof. Those comments come as a surprise to people who’ve been working on stadium plans. Supporters say the most valuable thing about the Metrodome may be the dome itself. Until now, the facility has been financially self-sufficient because it houses year-round activities besides NFL football. But the Vikings are sharpening their stadium pitch. They want a new stadium on the site of the Metrodome. The team opposes retrofitting or renovating…

…The Pontiac Silverdome in Michigan could become home to other sports events besides soccer, the likely new owner says. Andreas Apostolopoulos, owner of Toronto-based Triple Properties Inc., hopes to make an announcement in January about which teams will use the facility, the Detroit Free Press reports. “I like sports, and I like being involved with sports, so I hope to bring sporting events people will like,” he said Wednesday. “I’m not just thinking soccer but football or baseball or whatever.” The 80,311-seat arena is now owned by the city of Pontiac. Officials say it costs the city $1.5 million a year to run…

…Youth sports activities are expected to take a hit after the Arizona sports authority announced a funding scale-back. Besides youth leagues, the Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority is holding back funds for renovating spring-training facilities in Scottsdale and Tempe. The sports authority said it will make a $16 million debt payment on its largest obligation, University of Phoenix Stadium. The cutbacks to youth sports and spring training are a result of fewer dollars’ being collected in Maricopa County hotel-room and car-rental taxes.

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One was issued last Monday, lifting an injunction on the previous week’s sale by auction of the 94,000 square foot, 80,300 seat Pontiac Silverdome, along with an adjacent fieldhouse and 127 acres of land. There were four bids. The winning bid? $583,000. Total. After auction fees, the current owner — the City of Pontiac, Michigan — will net about $430,000. When professional sports tenants such as the Detroit Lions left, a property that cost $56 million to build was rendered practically worthless. In fact, Pontiac was prepared to accept any bid for the property, since maintaining it was costing the City $1.5 million per year.

The other order was issued in September by Judge Berrigan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Eastern Louisiana, ordering St. Bernard Parish not to interfere with the construction of a mixed market-rate and low income housing project. The Parish, faced with an influx of low income tenants, had refused to issue building permits for the project, imposed a moratorium on building apartment complexes, and passed an ordinance making it illegal to rent to anyone other than a blood relative without special permission. The New Orleans area faces an extreme shortage of low income housing, despite the population diaspora from the area generally. Most of the housing destroyed by Katrina was low income.

There’s a lot to ponder about the Silverdome sale: That there were three lower bids. That the winning bid was less than the minimum salary for two NFL rookies. That economically, everything Michigan touches seems to dissolve.

There’s also a lot to ponder about the Louisiana case: The race and class issues implicit in the development of low income housing. The institutional role of courts as a check on the popular will. The possibility that some of those in need of that housing once spent time sheltering in a hellish environment inside yet another domed stadium.

But as a law professor who teaches property, I was also struck by was the extraordinary difference in power between commercial and residential tenants. In Pontiac, the lack of willing commercial tenants for the Silverdome reduced the value of the property to a nominal amount. In St. Bernard Parish, despite an abundance of ready and willing residential tenants, a court order was required to get a what should be a profitable property developed. This week I’m teaching my students about the gradual importation of contract law concepts into the law of leasehold estates. I tell them that those contract law doctrines tend to protect residential tenants, recognizing what is often unequal bargaing power between residential tenants and lessors. They are less protective of commercial tenants, because commercial tenants often have as much bargaining power as lessors.

Watching the Vikings on Sunday, oddly enough, brought that lesson home.

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Its latest innovation is to send out an email reminder to voters two weeks before elections and then again on election days. The reminder will also include a bevy of other information voters can use to make the process easier.

“It’s kind of like an electronic post-it note,” says Ruth Johnson, Oakland County Clerk/Register of Deeds.

The emails will be sent out before all local, school, state, and federal elections and will link to the clerk’s website. The site will feature a list of candidates and ballot proposals, campaign finance reports, polling locations, and instructional videos for using voting machines.

It will also feature a new election reporting system that reveals results in real time. Also included will be information on voter registration and on how to become a poll worker, and a link to the state’s Voter Information Center.

“This is just one more tool in the tool box,” Johnson says.

For information on these new systems, click here.

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The Video Center is located on the county’s website and the Blogin’ Cafe was featured at last year’s Arts, Beats & Eats festival in downtown Pontiac. The awards recognized these programs as first-rate ideas and collaborations on digital solutions that benefit citizens.

Oakland County sees this as a sort of electronic evolution of government that provides more with less. The idea is that the old ways of deeply rooted government processes where certain people look at certain sheets of paper decade after decade can be turned on its head thanks to the new economy.

Now it can do such work with fewer human resources while still dispensing more information to more people. This new automation provides more information in a convenient way.

“Many times they’ll go to the web first before they pick up the phone or get in the car,” says Phil Bertolini, deputy county executive and CIO for Oakland County. “We believe the needs of the consumer are changing.”

They also see this as a way of effectively cutting costs without reducing services in a time of ever-present budget shortfalls. It’s a line of new, innovative thinking officials are aggressively pursuing and why Oakland County was recently rated as the No. 1 digital county in America.

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