Visit Tri-Valley, the region's taxpayer-supported tourism arm, is pitching a $365 million, publicly funded event center near the Dublin/Pleasanton BART station — and Pleasanton's own interim city manager says the city has bigger problems to pay for.

The proposal, first detailed by the San Francisco Chronicle, would put public money from Alameda County and the cities of Dublin and Pleasanton behind a 100,000-square-foot venue that a private operator would run. It lands at an awkward moment: Dublin's City Council just killed a hotel-tax increase before it could reach the November ballot, and Pleasanton is wrestling with its own budget strain. The plan asks three governments with shrinking fiscal room to underwrite a privately operated arena.

According to reporting by the Chronicle's Sarah Ravani, the destination-marketing organization for Dublin, Pleasanton, Livermore and surrounding communities wants to build the venue on land near the Dublin/Pleasanton BART station. As described to the Chronicle, it would pack 100,000 square feet of flexible space — convertible to 12 basketball courts or 24 volleyball courts — and double as a convention hall and performing-arts center seating up to 5,000.

The financing is where the trouble begins. The Chronicle reported the project would draw on taxpayer funds from Alameda County and the cities of Dublin and Pleasanton. That structure — public money underwriting a facility that would be privately owned and operated — is exactly what Pleasanton's interim city manager, Joe Calabrigo, told the Chronicle he can't justify right now.

"Given all of the other financial issues that the city of Pleasanton is dealing with, putting up public money for a facility that would be privately owned and operated would not be a very high priority for the city," Calabrigo said, per the Chronicle. He added: "It's not something that our council at this point has indicated their support for."

Visit Tri-Valley frames the arena as an economic engine, not a cost. CEO Tracy Farhad told the Chronicle the venue would "bring in money for decades to come" and pull outside visitors whose spending "will contribute to the general funds of all of our cities." Farhad also signaled the organization hopes to spread the bill beyond local coffers: "We hope to get funding from other resources, not only our taxes. From federal and state and county, of course."

The Tri-Valley's fiscal weather complicates that hope. On July 21, the Dublin City Council voted 3-1, with one abstention, against placing a hotel-tax increase on the Nov. 3 ballot — falling a single vote short of the four required, the Pleasanton-based Independent reported. The measure would have raised the city's transient occupancy tax from 8% to 12%, one of the few levers a city like Dublin has to capture revenue from exactly the kind of visitor traffic an arena is supposed to generate. Lawmakers wouldn't even let voters decide on it.

Pleasanton, meanwhile, is the city Calabrigo describes as juggling "other financial issues." The Independent has chronicled a run of belt-tightening and revenue fights across the Tri-Valley in recent weeks, from council-salary disputes to school-bond refinancings pitched as taxpayer savings.

None of this means the arena is dead. Big civic projects routinely survive an early cold shoulder, and Visit Tri-Valley's own website lists a "Multiuse Event Center" among its initiatives, signaling the organization intends to keep pushing. But the proposal as floated asks three governments to commit hundreds of millions to a privately run venue at a moment when Dublin can't pass a modest tax on hotel rooms and Pleasanton says it has more pressing bills.

The pitch, in other words, is a bet on the Tri-Valley's future. The near-term math is a harder sell.