June 25, 2009
49ers vote still up in the air
The city of Santa Clara joined its neighbors in San Jose in punting on a decision on a stadium referendum Tuesday night, saying only that a vote on a San Francisco 49ers stadium would likely take place in March, April, or June. The vote would consist of two ballot questions: One on approving the overall project, the other on allowing the team to forgo competitive-bidding rules in selecting a contractor.
Meanwhile, a recent report by Santa Clara claims that a football stadium would be a boon to the city's money-losing convention center, creating "synergies" (read: more conventions would come to town if they could use the stadium space, too) that would generate hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in new tax revenues. In the memorable words of Heywood Sanders, this theory is "a lot of hooey."
