The Glendale City Council recently approved extending a contract to provide emergency medical services for the operator of the University of Phoenix football stadium at a cost of $25,000 to Glendale taxpayers.

Glendale first entered into an agreement with SMG in June 2016 and has extended it twice already. The latest extension takes the contract out to April 7, 2017 in order to cover the NCAA Men’s Final Four.

The Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority, which owns the stadium the Arizona Cardinals play in, hired SMG last year as the facility’s manager and operator, replacing Global Spectrum.

I’m proud of the events we host here in Glendale but we need not do it on back of residents who themselves, many can not afford to attend these events,” Councilman Bart Turner said. “It’s not right or fair for our taxpayers to underwrite these events when so much money is being made all over the place.”

He also noted that AZSTA and NCAA were both put on notice about a year ago or more about this issue.

“It’s amazing we are still doing it,” he said.