There is understandably a growing public animosity about providing millions of tax funds to build athletic facilities.

A good deal of attention has been focused recently on Kansas City and St. Louis and their efforts to revamp and replace existing athletic facilities such as baseball and football stadiums.

Nearby Kansas City has innumerable funding shortfalls, which indicate it will be a tremendous problem to dredge up millions in public funding to make major improvements at Kauffman Stadium and Arrowhead Stadium. The Kansas City school district, for example, is in terrible trouble and it would seem that big money and leadership should be focused first in that direction. Others think owners and management of the Royals baseball team and the Chiefs football team should provide dollars out of their profits.

But the handwriting really may be on the wall in the case of St. Louis. In recent times, a number of cities have built new stadiums of various kinds, particularly for baseball. Not only have the costs to taxpayers been high but ticket sales and related merchandising have not met expectations to meet payoff schedules. That clearly has not gone unnoticed in St. Louis.

Bear in mind that St. Louis is a community noted for its fanaticism about the Cardinals baseball team. For decades, people have grown up, lived and died as dedicated fans of the Cards. Tickets sales also have been good, even in some of the leaner years.

But when the Cardinal people recently asked taxpayers to finance a costly new stadium, “the response was stony,” said one observer. Another called the silence deafening. Only the promoters seemed enthusiastic.

Current proposals for a $346 million ball park to replace the team’s aging downtown Busch Stadium died recently when the legislature refused to commit funds for the job.

“People and the legislature had this preconceived idea that it was corporate welfare for billionaire owners and millionaire players,” said Jeff Rainford, the St. Louis mayor’s chief of staff.

This also cases a dark cloud over the chances of Kansas City’s getting the millions it wants for its baseball and football stadium updates.

Not all new projects are losing ground. Deals for new sports arenas are being negotiated in such spots as Illinois. State and local officials agreed last year to put up $400 million toward a new Chicago Bears football stadium. Whether that succeeds remains to be seen. It still might not.

Most alarming to many is Los Angeles, which is trying to raise huge amounts of public money to build a professional football stadium downtown in a city that doesn’t even have a pro football franchise.

Then there was the Houston debacle where the defunct Enron Corp. endowed the new baseball stadium with its name, because of its contributions. When the firm flopped so badly and disastrously, the name came off and Houston officials had to start looking for other funding sources to plug the huge gap.

The issue is not difficult to understand. Why should citizens pay taxes to build stadiums whose ticket, parking and concessions prices are so high that average fans cannot afford to see their teams? A Kansas City football weekend can easily cost a family of four around $200.

The bloom seems to be off the stadium-building lily. If it isn’t, it should be. The slogan for owners and overpaid athletes should be “You wanna play, you pay then we’ll decide if you deserve our patronage.”