"Glendale bet big on professional sports in the last 15 years, spending millions of dollars on a hockey arena for the Arizona Coyotes and investing heavily in a spring training ballpark for the Chicago White Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers.
Then the economy tanked, and the hockey team went through bankruptcy, with several different owners in recent years.
The city has found stronger financial footing since then and its bond rating has improved markedly, but not without having to raise taxes, trim 25 percent of the municipal workforce, cut back on paving projects, and reduce hours at municipal swimming pools and libraries.
The 9.2 percent sales tax that shoppers and diners pay in Glendale is among the highest in the state.
To fiscal conservatives, Glendale serves as a cautionary tale for suburban cities across the United States that want to throw public money at professional sports projects.
"Overall, it's a bad move for cities," said Kurt Altman, general counsel for the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute, which fought Glendale over its enticements to the hockey team.
"As much as they say it's going to make the city a destination, it just doesn't."
...Glendale is far from alone.
...As he navigates the financial situation, Glendale Mayor Jerry Weiers returns to a maxim he has repeated many times in his life: "I'm not living in the past. I'm just paying for it."
In the case of the Super Bowl, he believes the city is paying dearly.
It's spending huge amounts of money on overtime and police and public safety costs for the Super Bowl but not getting much back.
Super Bowl visitors are mostly staying in Phoenix and Scottsdale and only showing up in Glendale on game day, meaning the city won't see much of a boost in tax revenue.
And the city was hoping the state would reimburse Glendale for its police overtime costs, but lawmakers have scoffed at the idea.
Weiers said it pains him that the city had to cut services and lay off workers, but the moves were necessary to ensure financial solvency.
He said the outlook has improved in the last year, a far cry from a couple years ago when Glendale was in jeopardy of joining the likes of Detroit in the category of municipal bankruptcies.
"I have to believe that if '1' is perfect as things could be and '10' was bankruptcy, I'd say we were a strong '8,'" Weiers said.
"We never had to go there, and I strongly believe we won't have to go there."
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