Rays Lose Day/Night Doubleheader in Tampa City Council Chambers

On the field, the first place Rays lost Thursday to the Blue Jays 3-1 in Toronto. Off the field, the team took a couple of Ls in Tampa City Hall. A 9th inning squeeze play by Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) Board member Bill Carlson to remove the scheduled vote in August for the Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) with the Rays succeeded. Board member Alan Clendenin tried to pinch-hit for the Rays, arguing there would be no harm in keeping the agenda item as a placeholder. He struck out with only Board member Luis Viera joining him in voting against Carlson’s motion.

In the nightcap, the Rays made an early critical error assuming the Comprehensive Plan amendment was a formality. The game was over after the first inning. The Rays would have had better luck sending Yandy Diaz to council chambers because the Designated Hitter they sent must have been expecting a couple of softballs from council. They whiffed when Council member Charlie Miranda came with the high heat. Council member Lynn Hurtak painted the corners with questions about the choice in designation and development patterns. They were left with their bat on their shoulder shaking their head when she closed it out with a motion to not transmit the amendment straight down the middle. Video review upheld the strikeout showing only Clendenin, Viera and Council member Naya Young voting no. The Rays clearly underestimated the scrappy home team and may need to go back and talk to their scouts before the two take the field again.

But seriously

Apologies, I hadn’t had time to write my own wrap-up for Thursday’s meetings before making the mistake of reading a sports columnist’s take on the events at Tampa City Hall Thursday. There are a lot of angles a sports columnist could take to cover the Rays quest to get a new stadium in a new city and county with public funding — carrying the professional sports team they cover’s water wouldn’t have been the one I would have taken. So I shoved as many baseball cliches and metaphors into a couple of paragraphs to describe my observations of the day as I could and hope it sounds equally as absurd.

Postscript

I wrote this late Thursday night and before I had an opportunity to reflect on it I started seeing the headlines shared on social media. Then I read the mayor’s statement. I also saw the photo Council member Bill Carlson posted Friday morning of himself with Rays CEO Ken Babby.

Here are my unfiltered thoughts. Nothing has changed about how I feel about the project. It’s been clear how Council members Hurtak, Charlie Miranda and Guido Maniscalco feel about using CIT funds. Carlson voted for the MOU and the use of the CIT funds and then used the CRA as a wedge to gain political leverage of the situation. The tale of a late night phone call and first thing Friday morning photo op with the Rays CEO depicting himself as a dealmaker sure seems contrived.

Yes, he motioned to remove the MOU vote from the agenda. One less symbolic vote. And I’m not convinced it wasn’t done on the suggestion of the Rays. The second continuation was done at their request.

I tried to crunch some numbers to figure out what it would take to pay off a $100 million loan on incremental funding using Drew Park as a baseline. By my estimate it would require at least 60 acres to be built to Channelside level density and intensity to just pay off the loan. The MOU outlined that the Rays would pay that to the CRA until the TIF could start paying it off. It’s possible they saw similar math and all the hoops necessary to change the Drew Park plan to get the loan and said no thanks. The city squabbling over a $100 million CRA loan taking attention off the majority of funding coming from the county is priceless. No one is yelling at the county commissioners who approved 4x as much public money as the city when the headline is about a defeated land use application.

Which I went back and re-watched the discussion as to why they were there. The Rays and their land use attorneys are under the impression they don’t need a future land use map change. The Ray’s representative said that the City of Tampa’s legal department insisted that it needed to be changed in order to develop the stadium. It was then Hillsborough College’s Board of Trustees who formally filed the public map amendment. The application was “out of cycle” so the City of Tampa’s legal department asked the Planning Commission to accept the application. That’s how we wound up with a transmittal hearing for a land use change on a project that is still conceptual.

Hypothetically a vote against transmitting the proposal doesn’t necessarily mean you are voting to slow down the project. If you were purely operating on political calculations and were to agree with the Rays believing the project can be developed without a future land use change — that the city legal department is wrong — or the reasons they think it are necessary are moot if something about the funding is going to change, then helping kill the application might have done the Rays a favor. While still safely sitting on the fence. Hypothetically.

But that’s probably me just being cynical. Clearly the mayor didn’t think the vote was productive. But then that assumes she’s more involved in the negotiations than what her office has led on. Not sure who she was referring to when she said “city leaders” were negotiating.

Cynical me would ask who is playing who.

Right now, there are no more scheduled items related to the Rays on council’s agenda. Until that changes, I think it’s safe to put this topic on a back burner. Anything else is noise.