There’s going to be a big talking-to tomorrow night tonight at the Anaheim City Council meeting. Here’s why.
When Anaheim’s Council majority decided to agendize an item for tomorrow’s tonight’s (Tuesday’s) meeting that would give away to Arte Moreno the rights to the baseball stadium parking lot for 66 years at a price of $1 per year …
UPDATE! UPDATE! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! UPDATE! UPDATE!
The above sentence (and ones also limiting this giveaway to the parking lot) were based on a misreading of the Memorandum of Understanding due to the difficulty in believing JUST HOW HORRIFICALLY BAD IT REALLY IS.
The truth is that except for the land underneath the stadium itself, which is already to be leased to the Angels, Arte Moreno gets EVERYTHING. He, personally, gets EVERYTHING. The whole 155 or so acre Stadium District.
The City gives up the rights to SPORTS TOWN, the area in which it had already invested millions in planning. Moreno gets to sell the rights to develop it. When the City put $30 million into improving the Stadium, residents were told that it would recoup the money with money from Sportstown. That ends here.
The City gives up the Grove. The City gives up the tax revenues to everything The money comes into the general fund — and then goes out to Arte Moreno, a right that he can keep even if he sells the right to the land! (Talk about “inflated pensions!”)
We now return you to the original, apparently not scandalous enough, story.
You may not have fully absorbed that, so let’s try it again: when the Council majority decided to vote tomorrow to give Angels’ owner Arte Moreno the rights to the the parking lot at the ballpark for 66 years at a price of $66 …
… rights that Moreno can transfer …
… right to eliminate the parking lot if he wants to and build whatever he wants to build on that land …
… or more to the point the right allowing whoever purchases those rights from him — most likely a client of Curt Pringle — to build whatever THEY want to build on what would be prime real estate WITH OR WITHOUT the existence of a baseball stadium next to it …
… for a term of 66 years …
… in exchange for which the city gets a grand total of $66 …
… to be VOTED ON TOMORROW WITHOUT A BROADER PUBLIC DEBATE …
… having only released the agenda item ON THE FRIDAY NIGHT BEFORE A HOLIDAY WEEKEND! …
… well …
… one might say that they have not kept faith with the people whom they represent.
So tomorrow tonight the people are going to have a long talk with them.
Sorry, that got a little jumbled. I’d better start over.
Part 2: The Anaheim Council has broken faith with the people. The people will have their say — for as long as it takes.
We’ve known for a while that the City Council majority — everyone on Council, that is, except for Mayor Tom Tait — has been negotiating a new lease agreement with Arte Moreno, the owner of the Los Angeles Angels “of Anaheim.” We didn’t know how bad it would be, but we figured that it would probably be bad.
It isn’t bad. It’s worse. You can’t even see mere “bad” from where this contract landed.
So, in preparing to pass a really rotten deal for the city, the Council Majority did the only prudent thing: it refused to announce that this action item would be on the agenda until the Friday night before a holiday weekend to make it harder for anyone to organize against it.
This is what the Council Majority did with the absurd Gardenwalk subsidy. It worked once — well, almost worked, but for that unpleasantness in court — so now it’s trying it again.
Sometimes, though, democracy can be a little harder to kill than other times. This time, people are on to them.
One local activist — a Republican gentleman, if that makes a difference to anyone — has sent out this e-mail:
Please invite your friends and neighbors to come and speak at tomorrow night’s City Council meeting. We would like to get a couple of hundred speakers speaking against this horrible giveaway to the Los Angeles Angels. We will continue this meeting until the early morning hours of the 4th, so that every one will be heard. Then maybe the Council will wake up, stay awake, and listen to us — the residents of Anaheim — instead of Big Business and Special interests, whose only interests are money, lots more money, and screwing Anaheim and its Residents!A $1.00 a year lease of the Anaheim Stadium 19 acre parking lot [SEE UPDATE — NOT JUST THAT!] for 66 years is an outright theft from us residents of Anaheim. The fact that they can build anything they want on the parking lot with out any environmental studies or approval, and sublease to any one they want to, is an insult to all of us.If there is to be this kind of giveaway, bring it to the people, let the people vote! The Council is elected by the people of Anaheim to represent the best interest of the residents of Anaheim — not of special interests or their cronies.See you tomorrow night.
So there you have it.
Residents of Anaheim — and even non-residents like me, who sympathize with them for their having such a corrupt and crackpot Council — are going to show up tomorrow and tell their stories — and tell them why this deal stinks too much to tolerate.
HOW MUCH MONEY could this 19 acres [UPDATE: NO, MORE LIKE 155 ACRES!] adjacent to a multi-purpose stadium bring in to the city’s coffers?
HOW MANY IMPORTANT THINGS could that money pay for?
HOW MUCH LEGITIMATE NEED IS THERE in Anaheim for such income?
The Council doesn’t seem to know. So a long train of speakers tomorrow night will tell them — in their own words — what this giveaway of the city’s birthright means to them.
Each person’s story is different. Each needs to be understood. None of them can be ignored.
None of them, especially, can be ignored because the Council tried to prevent advance notice of the vote!
So, if this item remains on the Council agenda, then we will have our say — three minutes a pop. It may be an all-night party. Students will want to talk about how this giveaway to Arte Moreno — who can then turn around and re-gift it to some client of Curt Pringle — hurts THEIR interests.
Homeless people will have someplace air-conditioned, next to a particularly fine bathroom, to wait tomorrow night until it’s time to have their say.
And if people are still talking when the sun comes up on Wednesday morning, then we may just continue on for another full day. Because there are that many stories out there explaining why this shouldn’t be done …
… and if it should be done, if should be done only after a citizen vote …
… and if it send to a citizen vote at all, if should happen after people have had more than seven business hours of notice that the vote was coming up.
We’re going to need to have a long talk with the Anaheim Council majority. Come out and be a part of it!
Here’s how I put it to my own friends on Facebook just now — which I hope you’ll share far and wide!
It is worse than that Greg.
We are not just giving Arte Moreno a parking lot. We are giving him “Sportstown” which is a chunk of the most prime real estate in the nation, already fully entitled and ready for a developer, hence their claim that it is CEQA exempt. In theory as long as the developer builds what was planned for that area (at taxpayer expense for all those consultants to entitle it) they save millions of dollars in studies and years of delay. Arte not only gets the land for a buck a year, there is a provision in the deal to even let him keep the taxes.
No, that is not all, it gets worse. How can it get worse? Arte is not a developer, he is a marketing guy. But he can take the deal, resell the development rights to a developer who DOES develop real estate, for many millions of dollars that should belong to the public, and STILL leave Anaheim, because the gift to Mr. Los Angeles is not tied to the Angels staying in Anaheim! Indeed, by tying it only to the ability to keep negotiating for a longer period, it offers Arte more wiggle room.
What? Right now Arte Moreno has a lease that forces him to pull the trigger by 2016-17 or he is stuck here. NOBODY is offering Arte a free stadium between now and 2016. The freebies cited in the staff report were built through Redevelopment, a program as dead as enterprise zones are about to be. And because we now have enough studies out there to show these sports teams are complete economic losers for the communities that host them, NOBODY in this economy is going to bond for a new stadium. Also, Arte’s MLB licensing restricts him to a territory, and the big bad Dodgers are not going to let him get any closer to Los Angeles than his falsified team name!
Arte is in such a bad place right now that the best thing for Anaheim to do is sit tight, call his bluff, and actually threaten to lock his team OUT of the stadium unless he gives back some of the concessions we made in exchange for the naming rights we didn’t get. So why would we want to extend the contract that has us in the strongest position we have been in as a city, headed into negotiations with the team. Why would we give up that advantage unnecessarily? Once we put ink on the deal even for the purpose of non-binding negotiation, we would be found acting in bad faith to pull that offer off of the table. The time to rethink this is NOW and the City Council’s timing has not left us the time for anything more than a cursory examination of the deal points before ONCE AGAIN railroading a bad deal through as quickly as possible.
The attitude from staff,which I am sure is driven by the Council majority, is that without the Angels the land is worthless. Think about all of the uses for that real estate, lovingly nestled in the arms of 3 major freeways. Broadcom is looking for a new campus site in Irvine, you think they would like some free land in exchange for creating GOOD jobs and not minimum wage drags on our economy? How about a University? Even if we did nothing but rock concerts without a professional sports team of any kind, the people of Anaheim would at least keep the money coming in. Today we pay for the roads visitors use to come into the stadium, and Mr. Moreno keeps every nickel of income those visitors generate!
The staff report says it is a matter of civic pride to have a pro team. Well they seem to have forgotten that the Angels refuse to identify with Anaheim, so how much pride can they really generate? they are no longer “our Angels” are they? Today they are nothing more than the punchline on a late night talk show hosts’ monologue. How about seeking some civic pride by taking the money we are spending on the losing ball team we host, and putting it into curbs and sidewalks, parks and libraries, maybe some Police training and extra bodies in uniform?
Anaheim City staff and the leaders who order them into these suicide deals no longer represent the people of Anaheim, and the question we MUST ask ourselves is who do they represent? Show up Tuesday night and find out for yourself.
Let’s close Disneyland while were at it!
Oh, is Disney threatening to relocate if it doesn’t get the right to take over prime public land for free — for 2/3 of a century?
Stop being quite so brilliant.
Are they?
If so, word of it has not yet reached Brea.
Maybe Moreno will sell his development rights to Disney. Or lease them.
But would that mean tearing down the stadium to create “Arizona Adventure”?
I would rather the answer to that question stay forever locked in your imagination, as ANY economic return would STILL be only to Disney (The ORIGINAL deal-holder, BTW) and the City would STILL be lucky to find crumbs in the seat cushions, which is a CHARITABLE assumption, if THIS sorry excuse for their intent of a deal displays their financial acumen.
Where does that 19 acres come from? The “Stadium District” has got to be closer to 50 or 60 acres, right? Check out the map in the Master Plan.
Cynthia is right in all her points.
Here’s what I see:
The deal points would NEVER have gotten this far without staff getting a clear direction from some string puller. Sorry, Cunningham, I don’t have to be a mind reader to know that if the room stinks somebody was flatulent.
There is not a single upside to this deal. Anybody who lets this go ahead is either an imbecile or a crook.
If you’re trying to say that I’m off by an order and a half of magnitude, you could be nicer about it!
Has Mr. Morton of City Staff contracted ‘Stockholm Syndrome’? Where do “non-economic benefits to the City even enter into the discussion? Didn’t the failed lawsuit over naming rights already define Mr. Moreno’s position on “non-economic benefits”? When all of the proposed MOU concessions BY the City are economic, what do supposed “non-economic benefits” to the City do, other than cloud the issue? Why is not the “Convention Sports and Leisure” study attached, to supply context for the numbers thrown about in the letter? It would be informative to see what priorities have been defined to Mr. Morton for this effort , and WHO has defined them.
Big Box of Red Whine, I called the City as soon as I read the staff report, and asked the city Clerk’s office for whatever study was cited by staff since it was not posted on the Agenda. Of course at 4:45 heading into Labor Day I was not going to get far, but staff admitted there MIGHT NOT BE A REPORT to turn over! It is possible that the “experts” merely offered an opinion and staff used it for their report. Yes, it is possible that these boneheads are basing their decision on a non-report thrown out as an opinion, without the ability to vet the information in any way. Lawsuit anyone?
Ryan, I do not think they even care anymore as to whether we believe them or not. The arrogance of this crowd of scum is earned in every way. They know that nobody is paying attention! They can do anything they want, nobody is reporting on them in a way that really gets the attention of voters, and come election time their benefactors will blanket the city with slick, glossy mailers talking about how they kept the Angels in Anaheim and created jobs with the hotel deal and reduced greenhouse gases with a fancy streetcar, and very few voters will ever know that those deals truly screwed the people of Anaheim. They are as safe as any pack of thieves and liars could get, buffered by the money of their friends and an at large election system in a massive city that is so spread out that very few people really know what is going on!
Now for the good news. This grab is SO big and SO blatant that just maybe the press will jump on it. Arte Moreno did himself in with the name change, Anaheim no longer has any emotional ownership of the team, even hardcore Angels fans are OK with the idea of them leaving rather than granting more concessions, because they disowned us.
I think the band of miscreants on that dais bit off more than they can chew this time, and this deal will prove their undoing, Sadly, they will be busted only AFTER they have given away even more of our resources…..but they WILL be going down.
The best thing we can do right now is shine the light on their little nest of cockroaches. Please, please, we need everyone reading this to send the info out to your mailing lists, help us raise awareness. We need people to come speak at Council, we need those who cannot speak at Council to send emails to SRay@anaheim.net and ask Sue to share with the Council before the meeting. We need people to call media contacts you might have and ask them to cover this story. If this pisses you off, tell others, scream as loud as you can, it is time for Hell to rain down on these people.
“Anaheim needs this deal because otherwise we may lose the Angels, because Moreno would immediately give up the already cushiest deal in baseball, especially when you factor in the media rights, and move the team to Juarez.”
The MOU carries with it an obligation to continue to bargain within its terms in good faith. You don’t sign it and then say “screw it.” The time to stop it is this Tuesday.
“SOMEONE, somewhere thinks this is fair and on the up and up”
Arturo Moreno?
They may just think that we’re that inattentive. It’s not a bad bet, but I’ll take that action.
We need Fullerton homeless advocates to show up tomorrow and remind Anaheim that they could use the money from this area to stop driving homeless people into Fullerton. Think you can round up a posse?
We need the pizza and the soda. As for you, we’d finally get the chance to meet!
Very clever of you not to admit to having a posse. I’ll pretend to be convinced.
This is disgusting. If the giveaways were going to generate optimal economic benefits for the city, why would they continue with their steamrolling approach? Even if the council majority does not pay attention to the residents speaking against these deals, we need to be there tomorrow.
Now that the Heritage Forum has been sold to a church, where else could the Anaheim Performing Arts Foundation build a state of the art facility to at least match the Carpenter Center in Long Beach, or the Cerritos Performing Arts Center? Mayor Tait reckons it could be on city land somewhere in the Grove/Angels vicinity – in the 155 acres. Very nice idea. But not if the whole lot is sold off for a $66.
Let’s be fair: leased off for $66 — and only for 2/3 of a century.
Whew… And I’ve been bitching about misuse of public funds to pay for personal travel, unauthorized (without Council review and approval) purchase of $3.4 million in water rights and Brea’s apparent violation of Proposition 218 with their tiered water rates.
Counting my blessings…
As usual, Cunningham, spokeshole for the Kleptocracy sez:
“It is important to note that this is not a final vote.”
That’s an outright lie, of course. Article 7 of the stadium MOU is BINDING, and that gives Moreno another 2.5 years to cut and run. And what did we get for this largesse? NOTHING.
Did he do this only on his own blog? Then it didn’t happen. It’s easily ignored, so ignore it.
I think that the biggest piece of evidence that they intended to put this over as a holiday weekend snow job is the fact that Cunningham’s sole defense of this deal is “just wait — you’ll get your chance to talk later!” If Moreno/Pringle/the Chamber/et. al. anticipated any serious opposition tonight, I’m sure that they would’ve produced a shiny happy fact sheet for Cunningham, Murray, and like-minded shills to regurgitate.
exactly. Like telling the black folks, OH, Election Day is on Wednesday this year!
Yep. The deal’s been done.
good catch and good luck tonight. wow. and about those tiered water rates….social engineering and no better at conservation than districts without tiered rates. just a way to soak some people. every drop should cost everyone the same no matter how much you use.