Here's a multiple choice quiz. If you could choose a budget priority for Toronto, would it be:

A) Filling potholes and fixing crumbling roads
B) Putting more police on the streets to reduce gun violence
C) Adjusting property tax rates to offset skyrocketing evaluations
D) Building a soccer stadium

If you were Toronto City Council, on October 27th you chose D). Yes, dear taxpayer, you read that right. At a time when citizens are living in fear and property tax assessments are rising by double-digits, taxpayers are being asked to fork out $9.8 million for a soccer stadium. In addition, the city is providing a parcel of land estimated at another $10 million, no charge, to the project.

But it's not just Torontonians who are footing the bill. The province will be spending $8 million; the federal government $27 million. Meanwhile, the private company Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE) gets a sweet deal: it chips in just $18 million for construction costs, and $10 million for naming rights.

But wait, it gets worse. While it is on the hook for construction cost overruns, MLSE only bears the first $250,000 in operating losses; the city and the company split anything above that. And since it has no cash on hand, Toronto will have to borrow the $9.8 million to pay for the stadium, which will cost $16 million including interest over 20 years. That's the equivalent of a 1.5% residential property tax hike.

Ontario taxpayers have seen this kind of lunacy before: it was called the Toronto Skydome. Set up in 1989 as a public-private consortium, it ended up costing taxpayers four times the original tab. $500 million later, the public's stake in the stadium was sold for $100 million. It was then sold again last year to Rogers Communications for $25 million when the previous owners went under. Talk about the law of diminishing returns.

Governments should not spend public money on professional sports. Period. This is even more true at a time when the city of Toronto chronically goes to the province for budget bailouts, and when Ontario is facing a $1.6 billion deficit. If taxpayers can't get knee surgery without waiting over a year, private companies shouldn't get sweetheart deals to build soccer stadiums.

Politicians claim that the new stadium will provide a boost to Toronto's economy. The truth is that pro sports franchises don't deliver the promised goods. On April 12 2005, the Nevada Policy Research Institute reported on an analysis of 37 U.S. metropolitan area economies with professional sports franchises.

The study showed that the presence of franchises didn't boost local incomes. In fact, it negatively affected retail and service sector jobs; while hotel wages increased by $10 a year, restaurant and bar wages declined by $162. Why As peoples' spending on sports increases, their spending in other areas decreases. So while you may treat your family to a soccer game, you'll spend less money taking them out for dinner. Meanwhile, you'll have forked out precious tax dollars to bring the franchise to town in the first place.

It's also false that government has to pay to bring pro sports to a city. In Vancouver, plans are currently underway to build a 100% privately-funded waterfront soccer stadium. But in Toronto, no alternatives were examined apart from the MLSE "deal" before it was rammed through City Council.

The only way to put an end to Toronto's soccer stupidity is to prevent the federal and provincial funding from coming through. Taxpayers should tell Paul Martin and Dalton McGuinty to stop treating them like a soccer ball to be kicked around - and kill the deal.