To hear NYRA tell it, Saratoga Race Course is the most popular and successful track in the country – patrons pouring through the gates each summer, robust handle, and a lucrative TV deal with Fox Sports. And with it, or so they say, comes a boon to the local economy – restaurants, bars, hotels, etc. Revenue, revenue, revenue, taxes, taxes, taxes, with a chief beneficiary being the city of Saratoga Springs itself.
Given the above, I read with interest a recent CBS Albany piece that began: “As [it] faces at least a current $5 million deficit, and $7 million for 2027, the City of Saratoga Springs is proposing an 18 percent property tax increase, with staffing cuts proposed too.”
The city’s finance chief added: “The 2027 budget includes actions on both sides, on both the revenue and expense sides. We’re proposing an increase in property taxes, but we’re also reducing the workforce, extending hiring controls, limiting operating expense growth, reviewing the Capital program, evaluating fee-based revenues…we’re also currently suspending support for not-for-profits that we have long-time supported.”
Jacking up property taxes, firing employees, cutting aid to non-profits. Perhaps “The Track” is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Money aside, though, here’s something we know with certainty: Since 2009, the city of Saratoga Springs has been the site of 266 (that we know about) racehorse deaths – or about 15 per summer. That’s, good citizens of Saratoga, what your taxes are getting you.
This might sound like nit-picking in some ways, but in the real world, some of the broodmares that are exposed/ bred/ raped (whatever it takes to get them to conceive a foal) may not, for whatever reason, be able to carry the baby to term.
So even though there are those untold numbers of UNBORN fetuses that are never born and never counted in the foal crop, you know that there were broodmares that suffered untold agony and that the majority of us will never know how many of these exploited broodmares had to suffer and most likely be dumped into the slaughter pipeline. The Jockey Club is not going to go out of their way to report how many broodmares had to suffer that fate.
It might sound like nit-picking to make a big deal about the choice of words, whether to say never “conceived” or never “born” but either way a broodmare had to suffer in some way. A lot of times, there are those broodmares that are not able to conceive even though they were exposed, raped, sexually assaulted, etc.
Either way, it is bad news that horses are still mistreated but good news that fewer horses registered with the Jockey Club means fewer horses to fill race cards for gambling and fewer horses will be SENT OUT TO DIE on the racetrack or the slaughterhouse.
Thank you, Elizabeth. I always appreciate your comments.
Good. The fewer horses this industry breeds, the fewer horses it can exploit, injure, break, and kill for profit. Breeders deliberately bring these animals into a world where their lives and welfare are routinely subordinated to human greed, gambling, and entertainment. You cannot breed a supply of horses for exploitation and pretend you are doing it for their benefit. A horse that is never born will never suffer at the hands of humans. The goal shouldn’t be to sustain horse breeding. It should be to end the deliberate production of horses for an industry that treats their lives as disposable commodities. Breeding fewer horses isn’t a tragedy. It’s progress.
The Jockey Club is reporting a decline in breeding activity so that they project 17,000 new foals for 2026 and 16,500 new foals for 2027.
One consolation is that these horse-abusing monsters can’t kill a horse that was never conceived.