Councilman Mark Jeffreys said any new arena needs to be privately funded but is open to the city funding public infrastructure needs. “If there are public infrastructure needs around an arena that need to be in place to enable that investment, then we should treat that no differently than we do any other economic development opportunity,” he said. “Today, there are times that we invest in public infrastructure to spur an economic development project that has a strong return on investment.”

That at least seems like a sensible attitude towards it all.

But is it not funny that we “have a huge backlog of 400 million dollars of maintenance” and that we need to sell the railway but at the same time there is apparently money to fund a new arena?