NFL Franchise for Los Angeles

Re “NFL Clings to Its California Dreamin’ as Houston Primps and Fumes,” July 27: If the “investment” in an NFL franchise is such a good deal for the people of this city/county that our representatives are contemplating using our tax dollars to do it, why don’t we just skip the machinations of the millionaires looking to line their pockets with our assistance and do as the good people of Green Bay have done by owning the team as a city? Collect $100 from everyone in the city/county, and if my math is correct, that should give us enough for a down payment, to get a team here and let us all share profitably in this investment.

Raising our taxes so we can have the privilege of fighting traffic to park in an overpriced lot to attend a game with a ticket price that is more than a car payment is an appalling thought, not to mention a senseless use of public funds. Let the city and its citizens truly profit by this investment or let it go.

JESSE T. DABSON

Culver City

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Football, not baseball, but the same song and dance about eminent domain and public purpose that legally stole private property and forcibly evicted long-time property owners so that Los Angeles could bask in the sunshine of being a major league baseball city. Now the billionaires in the NFL can smell the bait? This is a city so hungry for professional football that it is going to displace 50, yes, 50 families for parking lots?

Why not have a referendum, a popular expression by all registered voters in Los Angeles: Do we need or want a professional football team in the city of Los Angeles if we have to condemn people’s homes to make it happen?

LOUIS INNERARITY

Los Angeles

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I have no problem with “investing” almost half a billion dollars in a stadium neither I nor any of my family would ever use. Just as long as the same amount of money is invested in our minds by, say, keeping public libraries open past 5:30 p.m. and on Sundays when I’m free to use them, giving tax incentives to touring theatrical productions, hiring more teachers, etc. Or, allow us average taxpayer-investors to sit in the stadium’s skyboxes on a rotating basis. Oh.

TOM OGDEN

Hollywood