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January 10, 2006
No stadium vote for Chargers
The San Diego Chargers have scrapped plans for a November referendum on giving the team 60 acres of free land for a new stadium and development complex. Team attorney Mark Fabiani blamed the collapse of the plan on city attorney Michael Aguirre, saying his opposition to the deal had made it impossible to find development partners willing to build the project with private money. Aguirre, who believes the land to be worth as much as $500 million, quipped to the San Diego Union-Tribune: "I'm surprised they didn't blame me for the Kansas City loss. No one person can be that powerful."
Fabiani and Nick Canepa's (http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports/canepa/20060110-9999-1s10canepa.html) arguments do nothing but blane city officials without taking an iota of responsibility or acceptance of the facts of the city's poor financial situation. "Reality be damned" is the only pettard that Spanos' stooges seem foist their propaganda with.
Rather than make a fairly obscene profit of corporate welfare (want to challenge that? have the team's books independently auditted) in National City and Chula Vista, the Chargers want to stay put in the same place they are in and make a shamelessly obscene profit at the expense of the City of San Diego; a location that needs remediation from a leaky gasoline tank farm that is across the street from the stadium...that's the bag Spanos/Chargers don't want to be left holding, let alone touch or contribute one dime towards.
The reality is that The Chargers are between a rock and a hard place. If anyone follows the money in this town, where it went to finance the 1996 Republican Convention, where that money came from to finance the event (the shell game with financing of the employee pension system) and one of it's hostesses, former mayor Susan Golding, one will see today's failure (assuming a legitimate attempt to get it on any ballot before 2008) to qualify the plebicite on a ballot as the chickens coming home to roost.
Posted by Ken on January 10, 2006 01:13 PM
Can anyone say Los Angeles Chargers?
Posted by Dan Cruz on January 10, 2006 02:44 PM
Can anyone say Los Angeles Chargers?
Posted by Dan Cruz on January 10, 2006 02:44 PM
RE: The Charger's very public announcement criticizing and condemning City Att'y Mike Aguirre as the person responsible from keeping the Chargers from getting 66 acres of city land for free.
Question: Shouldn't Aguirre have to report this as an 'in-kind' gift of very favorable political coverage for his (Aguirre's) re-election bid for which he'd otherwise have to spend tons of campaign money?
Posted by Edward Teyssier on January 11, 2006 01:40 AM