Court Opinion

ID: 9695570
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:23:29.390634+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:14.373678
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno:
I heartily concur in the Majority Opinion which has excellently covered the various issues involved in this litigation. I would make an observation on the constitutional aspects of the ease raised by the plaintiff and the Civic Club of Allegheny County, amicus curiae. The plaintiff contends that the agreement between the Stadium Authority and the City of Pittsburgh creates a debt which is violative of §§8 and 10 of Article IX of the Pennsylvania Constitution. The word “debt” is at most an ambiguous, equivocal term. As stated by this Court in Pennsylvania, Co. v. Scott, 346 Pa. 13, “It is true that, while every debt is an obligation, not every obligation is a debt.” The word, therefore, where the Constitution is involved, must be given its popular meaning. “Any provision of the Constitution must be interpreted in the popular sense and as understood by the people who adopted it.” Goodwin v. Allegheny County, 182 Pa. Superior Ct. 28.
The Pennsylvania Legislature made its interpretation of the word “debt” very clear when it declared in the Act of June 29, 1953, P. L. 1034, that: “Any municipality may and it is hereby authorized to make annual grants from current revenues to the Authority to assist in defraying the costs of operation, maintenance and debt service of the project and to enter into long term agreements providing for the payment of the same.”
It is to be noted here that the Legislature laid down no restrictions or limitations on grants to be made by the municipality. Did the Legislature violate the Con*507stitution in so authorizing the City to enter into the agreements here in controversy? I do not believe so. In Com. ex rel. v. Sunbury School District 335 Pa. 6, we specifically stated: “All legislation must be construed as intending to favor the public interest.”
The Legislature in making the authorization, which the City has utilized, was not only presumably acting in the public interest but its sole purpose was to make possible the fulfillment of a public need. What is meant by public need? Public need “should be construed in such manner as to give constitutional sanction and life to the constantly changing conditions and needs of the people, not only of the horse and buggy age and the automobile age, but also of the airplane age, and the atomic age.” (Evans v. W. Norriton Township Municipal Authority, 370 Pa. 150.)
In this litigation we are not dealing with the horse and buggy age, but with the atomic age. But, more than that, we are dealing with a modern development in an age which properly regards as essentials for all the people services which heretofore were enjoyed only by the wealthy and the affluent. There is need today to provide the public with facilities for recreation, sports and enjoyment of outdoor athletic competition. Even passive participation as an onlooker in competitive sports stimulates a desire for physical exercise. In any event it takes the spectator into the open air and provides him with exuberant escape from the cares of the day and arms him with recharged energy to meet responsibilities as a citizen. All this helps to build up a healthy community.
It is argued by the Civic Club of Allegheny County, amicus curiae, that the construction of the Pittsburgh Stadium is not a proper use of municipal authority because, it says, it provides for “luxury service rather than an essential service.” Therefore, the construction should not be allowed under the conditions set out in *508the various obligations. It says that “the community can survive without a baseball and football stadium, but it must have police, fire, school, sewage disposal, and other basic services.”
The objective of a community is not merely to survive, but to progress, to go forward into an ever-increasing enjoyment of the blessings conferred by the rich resources of this nation under the benefaction of the Supreme Being for the benefit of all the people of that community.
If a well governed city were to confine its governmental functions merely to the task of assuring survival, if it were to do nothing but provide “basic services” for an animal survival, it would be a city without parks, swimming pools, zoo, baseball diamonds, football gridirons and playgrounds for children. Such a city would be a dreary city indeed. As man cannot live by bread alone, a city cannot endure on cement, asphalt and pipes alone. A city must have a municipal spirit beyond its physical properties, it must be alive with an esprit de corps, its personality must be such that visitors — both business and tourist — are attracted to the city, pleased by it and wish to return to it. That personality must be one to which the population contributes by mass participation in activities identified with that city.
Hardly anything in America symbolizes a large city more than its National or American League baseball team. To take the Pittsburgh baseball team out of Pittsburgh would be to deprive its people of the opportunity for a spontaneous outburst of civic pride, for which there is no substitute. In fact, it is practically impossible to visualize Pittsburgh without its Pirates. To take the Pirates out of Pittsburgh would be like taking them out of the history of the Spanish Main, it would be like diverting the course of the Allegheny and Monongahela River so that they would not form *509the Ohio at the immortally historical Fort Pitt, it would be like turning the Golden Triangle into a Tin Pan Alley, it would be like transforming the 42-story Cathedral of Learning into a one-room country schoolhouse.
But it is not enough to want the Pirates to stay, they must have a home. The Civic Club of Allegheny County says it does not argue against the Pirates, yet to deprive them of a place in which to perform their wholesome and exciting endeavors is equivalent to driving them out of Pittsburgh. Since Forbes Field will soon be only a memory, where are the Pirates to battle for the glory and pride of Pittsburgh, if the stadium is not constructed? It would be a sad day indeed if the Pirates should leave Pittsburgh and not return. Not to have the gladsome and thrilling Opening Day of the Baseball Season each spring, not to watch the tension-charged race of the home team against the teams from afar, not to be constantly buoyed up with the hope that with every game Pittsburgh may be getting closer to the coveted National League pennant and then go on to the electrifying sensation of the World Series — when for a week, all foreign and domestic troubles and the vexations of the high cost of living are drowned out in the flood of throbbing anticipations — not to have all this would be tragedy indeed in the history and life of Pittsburgh.
The Civic League does not seem to realize this and simply refers to baseball as a “luxury service” instead of accepting it, which it is, as an indispensably integral part of our municipal American way of life. If the Civic League wants to do away with all services except those which are indispensable to maintain life in a humdrum, lackluster existence, they should urge also the elimination of city parks, city swimming pools, city recreation centers, city museum, flower conservatory and public libraries.
*510The Civic Club speaks derogatorily of the Pittsburgh Stadium as a “facility used exclusively for athletic sports.” So are the parks and swimming pools devoted exclusively to athletic sports. Athletics are conducive to good health, they keep the blood stream supplied with invigorating oxygen, developing muscles and stamina, and it is as much a part of municipal function to encourage athletics as it is to clean out the swamps and malarial marshes. Rome and Greece at the height of their glory were as proud of their athletic excellences as they were of their military conquests.
The Civic Club says that the City is buying a “pig in a poke.” It is difficult to see how one can call the proposed stadium a “pig in a poke.” There is nothing clandestine about it; it will be large enough for the world to see, its financing is as clear as the sunshine in which it will operate. To employ the colloquialism of the Civic Club, it could be said that not only is the Pittsburgh Stadium not a “pig in a poke,” but not to have a stadium would be to put Pittsburgh in the class of “a slow poke” so far as large cities are concerned, in the great race of athletic competition which does as much for the spirit of any community as prosperity does for its economic circulation.
Then the Civic Club complains because the financial commitment of the City will run for 40 years. Is 40 years long in the life of a city the size of Pittsburgh? What are 40 years in the history of Rome, Paris or London? 40 years may be a long time to wait for a bus or streetcar, but in the sands of time running through the hour glass of history, 40 years is but a wink into posterity.
The Civic Club looks to the future pessimistically and argues that Pittsburgh may not meet its obligations. It paints the coming years with the black paint of gloom, and it ties mortuary ribbons on the long horizon. It says that we cannot depend on continued *511prosperity and then summons up the skeletons of the depression of yesteryear, dismally predicting that those same skeletons may again dance a grisly hornpipe across the greensward of Pittsburgh’s tomorrow.
This kind of thinking, if it had been adhered to through the years since the time of the Indians, would have retained Pittsburgh as a trading post on the Ohio, visited by teachers and school children who would listen to a guide relate how George Washington had come to this backwoods frontier in 1753, and how it might have developed into a city, indeed a metropolis, except for groups of well-intentioned citizens that condemned expansion of the post, strengthening of the fort, development of the stage trails and later laying down of railroad tracks for fear that the financial commitments involved might not be met. “The next tour of the colonial cemetery will be at 3 o’clock in the afternoon.”
I am certain that the members of the Civic Club will change their minds about the Pittsburgh Stadium after the baseball season has begun, and is under way. There is nothing in sportsland to surpass the thrill of watching the Flag rising on the Center Field flagpole to the accompaniment of the spine-tingling strains of the Star Spangled Banner, of jumping with attention to the umpire’s sonorous cry of “Play Ball!”, of listening to the dramatic crack of the bat as the ball goes soaring out into space, then watching the dust of the diamond exploding into clouds as the runner with the winning run comes furiously sliding into the home plate.
There is no song more symbolical of America’s love of outdoor fun than “Take Me Out To The Ball Game!” I am sure that the Civic Club will, upon reflection, be happy that this Court will now assure Western Pennsylvania and surrounding territory that we will always have a ball game to watch and a home team to cheer. *512The Club will have further reason for gratification that Pittsburgh will also continue to be assured of a home for the Pittsburgh Steelers. And it will be a matter of civic pride and local patriotism, always wholesome for a community, that these two fine teams will continue to have the opportunity to display their talents and abilities in the new, beautiful and magnificent Pittsburgh Stadium.