Issues surrounding the creation of a new stadium for the Chargers will be taken up by the San Diego City Council’s Budget Committee next month, Councilmen Todd Gloria and David Alvarez announced Tuesday.
The councilmen announced the hearing and outlined a series of “threshold issues” that need to be addressed in a memo to Mayor Kevin Faulconer.
“We are ready and willing to work with you, the Chargers and all stakeholders to develop a stadium plan that makes sense for everyone, and are pleased to see the expedited schedule for the mayor’s task force,” Gloria and Alvarez wrote.
“With the committee working on these issues concurrently, the city will be best positioned to meet the accelerated timeline sought by the Chargers for real progress,” they said.
Among the issues the councilmen said needed clarification:
- The funding sources for a stadium that Faulconer would find acceptable.
- The city’s capacity to issue future bonds.
- The amount the county of San Diego and other local cities are willing to contribute to the financing plan.
- How much money the Chargers will directly contribute to the project.
- The cost of moving the Metropolitan Transit System’s bus maintenance yard, which occupies one of the two sites under consideration for a stadium.
- And the price tag of a playing facility on the other possible site, next to Qualcomm Stadium in Mission Valley.
They also said the future of the proposed San Diego Convention Center expansion has to be resolved, because it could have an impact on where the Chargers stadium is located.
“Taxpayers need answers to key questions about a potential new football stadium,” said Gloria, who chairs the Budget Committee. “Recent events make it clear that the public needs this information sooner rather than later.”
He said the hearing will take place March 18.
“By resolving the threshold issues laid out in the memo, I am confident that the committee’s work will help the city move forward on a stadium plan that makes sense for everyone,” Alvarez said.
They said that since the City Council will have to consider any deal brought forward by the mayor, it’s “critical to get the answers to the questions now.”
Concerns about the bus maintenance yard were heightened by a letter from Paul Jablonski, the MTS chief executive, to Adam Day, chairman of a task force appointed by the mayor to determine a location and develop a financing plan for the stadium.
Jablonski said it could take five to seven years to vacate the bus yard, because the MTS would need to find and build on a new location. A site in Barrio Logan that had been targeted a few years ago for a new bus yard is now the location of the Monarch School, which educates children of homeless families, he said.
Jablonski also said major improvements would be needed for the trolley system in the East Village if the stadium were to be located there.
— City News Service