Thursday's St. Petersburg City Council workshop on the Rays
request to look around Tampa Bay for a new stadium site was as much theater as
it was workshop.
If you want to catch a blow by blow view, check out saintpetersblog, Janelle Irwin's: Live blogging St. Pete
City Council’s Rays drama one Wengay rant at a time.
I was there for about half the meeting caught some more on TV
back at my office.
Some thoughts:
The USF Student design mockups were interesting and exciting to
say the least. They were also a major distraction and cost the meeting about an
hour of pretty much pointless discussion.
Note to Chair Gerdes:
City Council is easily distracted. Next time someone wants to bring an exciting
new concept that has very little do with the actual agenda into a meeting
consider saying no politely.
At one point Council Chair Gerdes indicated he was pleased with
the wide ranging discussion. I agree. There was a lot of generally useless
information tossed around, a few tidbits of relevant information and all of
that was apparently enough to get Amy Foster to flip flop on her position.
Every time the Rays issue comes up Mayor Kriseman sounds more and
more like the Rays attorney than he does the people's representative. Kriseman does make a pretty good case for the
MOU, but I agree with Steve Kornell the upfront nut to move should be bigger -
a lot bigger.
I like his $55 Million,
with an annual de-escalator. Should not be a problem given the general
agreement that it will take seven years or so to get a stadium up and running.
By then the remaining amount should be reasonable. Unless the Rays have a
hidden agenda.
Note to Mayor Kriseman:
Put a muzzle on your resident political operative, AKA Chief of staff. Watching
the expressions and the body language I am pretty sure almost no one dais
really cares about his opinion or sparring with him. Next time someone should
make that clear.
Finally, I am a big believer in the theory that people, teams and
organizations possess a finite amount of collective energy to accomplish their
mission. Baseball is sopping up way to much energy and time from both the
administration and the City Council.
Regardless of the "economic impact" baseball is a major
distraction from critical issues like the south side, aging infrastructure, a
questionable Downtown Waterfront Master Plan and a host of other issues.
Baseball wants to leave St. Pete. They don't want another stadium
on the same site because in reality they believe the location is at least 50%
of the problem.
It seems up to this point they would like to leave somewhat
gracefully. It's time to put another offer on the table that addresses Council's
concerns and see how the Rays respond.
E-mail Doc at mail
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