Category Archives: San Jose

06.29.11
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Quick notes from Wolff-Townsend interview

Update 11:45 PM – Mark Purdy asks questions of both Wolff and Reed.

Wolff’s reactions to Townsend’s questions:

  • Not critical about Selig. Is resigned to the length of the process.
  • T-rights isn’t “us against the Giants.” It’s a baseball matter.
  • Washington-Baltimore is not comparable to Santa Clara County, and has not been discussed as comparable.
  • Acknowledges cities’ financial problems. Emphasizes ballpark will be built with private funds (does not talk about public land or infrastructure).
  • Continues to be in touch with San Jose and Mayor Reed.
  • Considers real estate transactions for Diridon small in cost relative to ballpark investment.
  • Maintains there is no Plan B, Plan A being San Jose.
  • Says that there is no financial plan for building in Oakland. Infrastructure costs in Oakland and Fremont are “not in the cards anymore.”
  • Oakland Mayor Quan and Wolff have been talking, will meet next month.
  • OT – Feels that 49ers and Raiders should share a stadium.
  • San Jose site is the only that appears to be ready (EIR, land acquisition).
  • Considers being an owner a privilege.
  • Says the A’s have a good fanbase, could be bigger.
  • Likes the challenge of figuring the plan out, but he’s getting older.
  • Hints for the first time that if situation drags past the point where he can see it through, his son (Keith) and staff will do it.

Not much from the interview, but the Quan and succession stuff is revealing.

06.29.11
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Onus

Update 4:50 PM – The League of California Cities, a redevelopment and city lobbying group, is going straight to the California Supreme Court for a ruling on the constitutionality of the new laws.

Update 2:40 PM – Governor Brown has signed the twin kill redevelopment bills.

Reminder: Lew Wolff will be on The Chris Townsend Show (95.7 FM) at 5:30 PM today.

At the end of Howard Bryant’s first column on the state of the A’s, it might have been easy to lose track of something Lew Wolff said.

Though the clock is ticking on the A’s, sources also say the committee has not expressed any time pressure to present Selig of its findings.

“That’s very true,” Wolff said. “The pressure isn’t on them. It’s on me.”

Starting today, the pressure will definitely be on Wolff – despite the fact that this pressure will come from circumstances beyond his control. At the Capitol, Republicans briefly delayed the inevitable passage of the budget, which was constructed from a combination of realignment and suspect revenue projections. The final package includes the two redevelopment bills (one to kill, one for ransom/rebirth) that were passed by the legislature two weeks ago. Cities throughout the state are lawyering up, though it’s hard to see what settlement could arise since any compromise on the state’s part would have consequences for the budget.

Legal challenges or not, all cities have to deal with the repercussions of the budget passage. Redevelopment advocates have called the twin bills little more than an extortion scheme to allow them to continue to work, and they’re not wrong. As mentioned last Tuesday, here are the amounts that would have to be paid for cities and counties to keep their RDA’s functional:

  • Alameda County: $7.7 million
  • Fremont: $9 million
  • Oakland: $39.7 million
  • San Diego: $69.8 million
  • San Francisco: $24.6 million
  • San Jose: $47.6 million
  • Santa Clara: $11.4 million

The figures are the extortion amounts. See how the Oakland amount is nearly as high as the San Jose amount even though it has less than half the population? That’s because so much land in Oakland (most of the flats) is in one redevelopment zone or another. Oakland North reports that the ransom payment won’t be factored into whatever budget is passed by the City of Oakland, which is understandable since it’s such a recent happening. As of this writing, Oakland is still choosing one of several budget proposals to approve, with the tough battle to gain union concessions won by Mayor Jean Quan. For Oakland, the issue with redevelopment becomes a matter of what they’ll be allowed to do once October 1 hits. Unlike San Jose, Oakland hasn’t gone to the trouble of winding down ORA’s activities, which makes extracting ORA from City Hall difficult. Currently, 17 police officers have their salaries paid by ORA, as well as half the salaries of the mayor and city council (who serve on the ORA board). As they scramble to figure out how some of those needs will be met, it’s not hard to see how actual projects which haven’t started in earnest could fall by the wayside.

Worse, not operating a RDA doesn’t mean that the state won’t get its pound of flesh. It’ll still entitled to the $40 million, only it gets to decide at a later point how it will extract the money from the city. If a city decides it can “play ball” it can pay the vig this year and a smaller amount for next three years, and whatever’s leftover can be used for RDA uses by a successor agency, or as I called it previously, “Son of RDA”. If a city decides it can’t play ball, a successor agency will be created for them, much the same way a defendant can get a court-appointed public defender. That agency’s sole purpose will be to tally up and distribute tax increment as it comes in, none going to new projects. Most importantly, in the can’t-play-ball scenario cities won’t be able to issue new debt. That’s a killer for Oakland, which was counting on being able to tap into new bonds to pay for some of the Victory Court project (land/infrastructure) cost. It’s even more important now that ORA had to absorb some of the city’s budgetary cost by acquiring HJKCC. Without that ability to issue new debt, Oakland’s liable to say, at “Our hands are tied, sorry we couldn’t do more.” And they’d be perfectly within their rights to do so. Thanks for killing the A’s again, Governor Moonbeam.

Then again, there may be a loophole, one that some of the largest RDA’s have been looking to exploit – and one that may have the biggest legal test. When Oakland initiated $100 million in property transfers from ORA back to the city two weeks ago, my response was, “What took so long?” Los Angeles transferred $1 billion worth of assets in a similar fashion in January. While these transfers may have occurred before the 2011-12 fiscal year begins, language written into ABX 26, the redevelopment killing bill, allows state-appointed auditors to determine if any transactions done January 1, 2011 or later (effectively after Brown took office) to be reviewed. What that means for those assets is anyone’s guess at this point, and probably will be the focus of more legal wrangling should the state start looking to liquidate assets to get its revenue.

There’s also the case of San Jose’s newly and hastily created SJ Diridon Development Authority. All thats missing from the name is “Re”. The whole affair seems like an overreaction to Brown, though there may be some hidden wisdom in there somewhere. Regardless of whether work is done through the skeleton crew at SJRA or SJDDA, at some point San Jose will also have to decide if it wants to pay to play. Recently, Mayor Chuck Reed and Lew Wolff have been adamant that they will find the necessary funds to cover the rest of the ballpark land acquisition and infrastructure change, $27+ million total. However, San Jose will also have to pay its $47 million soon if they want to be clear of the state’s reach. That would preclude merely piecemealing the remaining land sales/buys, as they have suggested. Instead, the onus may be on Wolff to deliver on the $89 million price of the Airport West (Earthquakes Stadium) land renegotiated last December. That money isn’t due until 2015, yet here we are with pushed up deadlines thanks to the death of redevelopment. $89 million would provide enough cash for SJ to complete its work and fund other infrastructure in the area it wants to be known as Silicon Valley’s Times Square (I thought it was Grand Central?).

Soon, a coalition of the ten largest cities in the state (including SF, SJ, and Oakland) will put together a lawsuit to vigorously challenge Brown’s redevelopment pay-to-play-or-die scheme. Their case is supported by the passage of Proposition 22 last November, which prohibits state-based redirects of property taxes. Legal murkiness started during the gubernatorial transition when Governors Schwarzenegger and Brown signed off on declaring a fiscal state of emergency, which set the framework for the redevelopment reform bills. Which has greater precedence, a new law or an even newer declared state of emergency? That’s what the courts will have to decide.

06.28.11
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Warriors ownership buys D-League team, may move to Bay Area

First reported by BANG Warriors beat writer Marcus Thompson (via David), the Golden State Warriors are buying the D-League’s Dakota Wizards franchise with an eye on moving it to the Bay Area. Both Thompson and Tim Kawakami think the eventual landing spot will be San Jose, which could create a plant-the-flag situation a la Bill Neukom buying into the San Jose Giants.

The ownership change will make the W’s only the fourth team to have sole control of a D-League team, the others being the Lakers, Spurs, and Thunder. All others have shared development pacts with one other team. That doesn’t mean that it always works. While it allows the parent team to install the exact offensive and defensive systems used by the big boys, it doesn’t always mean that the parent club will take advantage of it. The Lakers actually pulled back and didn’t operate the D-Fenders last season because they hadn’t figured out a way to effectively transition players from the D-Fenders to the Lakers. Operating a club is also expensive. The Lakers struggled figuring out a proper venue for the D-Fenders before settling on having the games be part of an early doubleheader with Lakers game. Given the notoriously late-arriving Lakers crowd at Staples, you can imagine how poor the attendance was. For the upcoming year, home games for the D-Fenders will be at the Lakers’ practice facility in El Segundo. The Spurs and Thunder have traditional out-of-town satellite relationships with their D-League teams (Austin and Tulsa respectively).

If you’re wondering where the Dakota Wizards might play after their last season in Bismarck, don’t think big as in the HP Pavilion. Too costly to do the changeover, and much too big for a D-League franchise, where the average attendance is around 3,000 per game. Instead, look to an ancient one-time barnstorming home of the Warriors, the San Jose Civic Auditorium. The Civic holds 3,000 and generally has a wide-open schedule. That lineage could also a factor. My favorite Rick Barry anecdotes are about playing in old arenas, including one where he chased a loose ball out of bounds along the baseline at the Civic and ended up running through a door and completely out of the arena onto San Carlos Street.

Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center would also be a good candidate, though I understand it would require some unknown amount of improvements before it was ready to host games again. There’s also the possibility of the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium being in play.

Update 1:30 PM – SJ Giants CEO Jim Weyermann has been named VP of Franchise Development for the Dakota Wizards. Given Weyermann’s South Bay ties, chances are that the franchise will move to the Bay Area once the sponsorships are lined up.

06.22.11
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Howard Bryant strikes again

Much thanks to Howard Bryant for continuing to publicize the A’s plight. Now he has included Victory Court and the Rays in the situation, pointing the finger at the commissioner and the owners for their collective indecisiveness and greed, respectively. He sums up the state of affairs between Oakland and Lew Wolff this way:

A’s fans will nod, too. Despite Wolff’s protestations that he is not purposely burying his club, the A’s appear to be following the Montreal narrative. Wolff is correct that Oakland has lacked the political leadership to give him optimism — with the brief exception of city manager Robert Bobb. No mayor, from Elihu Harris to Jerry Brown to Ron Dellums to Jean Quan, has used significant muscle to make the A’s a priority.

Wolff has no reason to trust Oakland politicians, not after the city and Alameda County leadership all but ruined the fan experience at the Oakland Coliseum to accommodate the disastrous return of the Oakland Raiders.

But there is another truth Wolff must face: Oakland doesn’t have much reason to trust him, either. Since Walter Haas sold the team in 1995, A’s owners have done everything in their power to leave Oakland, physically and emotionally.

The commissioner’s office, too, is complicit in the sabotaging of Oakland. Bud Selig rightfully lauds his three-person committee assigned to the daunting and thankless task of assessing the feasibility of baseball in the San Francisco Bay Area. But although he interprets the length of time the committee has taken to reach a finding — two years and counting since March 2009 — as evidence of its diligence, Selig is selling a false timetable, for he has actually had the A’s-San Jose relocation question on his desk for 14 years.

Bryant finishes his column by citing the possibility that Wolff could own the Dodgers and a fresh ownership group could come in to hammer out a deal with Oakland. If that doesn’t work out, the stage is set for the A’s to leave the Bay Area completely. That’s what scares me. Because Oakland doesn’t have a great track record of doing things like this well or properly, or as I’ve noted previously, alone. Unless there’s a Coliseum deal (which MLB has already discounted), Oakland isn’t getting help from the county or state. I want to believe that Oakland can pull it off. But if the scenario Bryant describes happens with the A’s being “Oakland or bust”, people (including the owners) are generally not going to lay money on Oakland. We are talking about $400 million for the team and $450+ million in private financing for a ballpark, plus $100 million directly from the city to get the site and infrastructure ready. If it is Oakland only, I’ll get behind it 100% – as should most readers here and anyone else who is for keeping the A’s in the Bay Area.

From a practical standpoint, A’s fans need to have as many options for the A’s ballpark location as possible, especially with the coming demise of redevelopment (which East Coast-based Bryant hasn’t mentioned in his columns). If we are stuck with only one option, heaven help us.

P.S. – One thing to look for in the upcoming CBA – franchise relocation fees. They aren’t in there right now, and with two teams possibly coming into play, could allow the owners to get their greed on once again.

06.21.11
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News for 6/21/11

The NFL and NBA are going hot and heavy with CBA discussions.

  • Latest proposal from the NFL (which has yet to be voted on by the owners) would guarantee a straight 48% share to the players, and would create a system in which all teams’ payrolls would approach the salary cap amount every year. The straight percentage is different from the previous system, which had the teams take $1 billion off the top for stadium expenses.
  • The NBA is proposing a “flex cap” which has a salary floor, max, and a sort of “supermax.” Previously, that upper limit was the luxury tax threshold, which if breached would require a dollar-for-dollar tax on additional payroll. The players consider the as-yet-not-enumerated upper limit a hard cap, since it provides a payroll ceiling. The two sides are early in their discussions.

Governor Brown is expected to announce an alternative to the budget he vetoed last week. Plans may include a revised (or not) take on redevelopment.

The California Redevelopment Association released a spreadsheet detailing the amounts that would have to be paid by various redevelopment agencies if AB 26 and 27 were signed into law by Brown:

  • Alameda County:  $7.7 million
  • Fremont:  $9 million
  • Oakland:  $39.7 million
  • San Diego:  $69.8 million
  • San Francisco:  $24.6 million
  • San Jose:  $47.6 million
  • Santa Clara:  $11.4 million

Remember that if the cities are not able to make these payments, they would not be able to issue additional bonds or otherwise acquire debt.

As initially reported by Rich Lieberman, KTRB is switching to a Spanish sports radio format, courtesy of ESPN Deportes. Once fresh capital is put into transmitter maintenance and facilities, I’d expect the 50,000-watt station to go after the… Giants. The Giants have Spanish broadcasts split between a 5 kW station in Pittsburg and a 10kW station in SF that drops to 500 W after sunset. Assuming the station got enough care and feeding, it could be a formidable player.

 

06.20.11
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More Cisco field renders from Bryant column

Buried within Howard Bryant’s excellent ESPN.com column on Friday was a photo gallery. I skimmed through it but didn’t notice the four three new renders (thanks Different James for pointing this out). Without further ado, here are the new renders – and commence the “colonnade” discussion.

Easily the best pic of the colonnade (minisuites) we've seen yet. Notice the bullpens on the left and how the seating decks meet the colonnade.

High up above CF, sort of like the front row of the upper deck of Mt. Davis but better.

Aerial shot includes surrounding buildings, including one that has already been demolished.

View from LF corner party suites toward downtown San Jose. I'm sure the placement of these suites is not a coincidence. Not shown: Planes flying in barely above Adobe HQ. Also: This image was part of the August 2010 release.

It’s really amazing how much the San Jose version of Cisco Field is unlike the Fremont version. The only element that has carried over is the roof. Also, I don’t know if these renderings have really gotten across how compact the place is. Sure, it’s easy to divine that from a 32-36,000 capacity. It’s much harder to get the feel, though. Sometimes I walk by the site and I wonder how they can fit it in there, despite the amount of time I’ve spent looking at it. Yet there it is.

06.17.11
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Howard Bryant reviews “high stakes game of chicken”

This one’s a must read, people.

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Howard Bryant may be a Boston guy through and through, but he cut his teeth at the Merc’s sports department for years as the A’s beat writer. He’s also written some excellent books on baseball: Juicing the Game, Shut Out, and his most recent work, The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron. Now he’s taken some time to write about the future of the A’s, and it’s fairly comprehensive (though he gets the last lease year wrong – it’s 2013, and he confuses Coliseum North with Uptown).

There’s too much meat in the column to cherry pick any one passage, so I’ll leave it up to you to read the whole thing. Then come back here to comment. As Bill King often said of the occasional high scoring game, “this one has become a donnybrook.”

06.17.11
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Sometimes a tree has to be chopped down

Nearly thirty years ago I went on a field trip with my brother and dad to a nursery in the Santa Cruz mountains. The nursery mostly grew coast redwoods. The afternoon was chilly as the marine layer wafted in over the mountains, giving the trees the moist, dense air that makes them thrive. As we left, my brother and I were both given redwood saplings in half-gallon milk cartons. We decided to plant them in the planter strip near the curb in front of the house. I forgot which brother was responsible for which tree.

Ten years later both trees had grown, though not taller than the other trees on the block. The western tree was taller than the eastern tree and had a thicker trunk. They required no maintenance. My dad laid down iceplant (just like at the old Coliseum!) around the trees and everything coexisted peacefully.

Another ten years passed, and from all appearances the western tree was growing like crazy, whereas the eastern tree was stalling out. The western tree also had much more substantial root growth, which could be identified by the uprooted sidewalk next to the tree. Its brother to the east posed no threat to strollers and skateboarders. Eventually the city noticed the problem with the sidewalk and told us that we had no business planting those trees next to the curb. We were told to put a tree in the yard next time, where it could have more space to grow. One day the city chopped down the western tree, which had grown to 20 feet tall. Later they pulled out the stump and fixed the sidewalk. The eastern tree still stands, growing little by little (I think). My dad calls it the Christmas tree and runs the holiday lights out to the former sapling every December. It remains the only redwood on the block.

San Jose’s redevelopment agency is much like the western tree. It grew as a mighty redwood was supposed to, big and tall and fast. Over time it became too big for its own good, and to keep it from destroying the street it had to be chopped down. SJRA’s mission was informed by a quest to become a big city, which meant putting tons of resources into it. Some of it was well directed (library, convention center, arena, museums) and some of it wasn’t (numerous retail failures). SJRA has a ton of fundamental problems that make it difficult to easily chop down. Yet that’s exactly what it’s done. In preparation for the upcoming fiscal year 109 jobs were slashed, or 91% of staff. Even as they expressed outrage at the passage of the twin “kill” bills, they clearly saw what was coming down the road and prepared for it.

Over the next year it’s expected that many RDA’s will be chopped down like the western tree. Most of those will be agencies that have grown too big or have become unmanageable. The loose definitions of blight and even the term “redevelopment” have allowed the agencies to grow unchecked. Controller John Chiang’s audit covered numerous instances of waste and abuse. Agencies who have mismanaged themselves are likely to get cut down, while the properly managed ones – and they do exist – have a chance to stay alive, like the eastern tree. What we don’t know is the criteria for separating the good ones from the bad ones.

With the first real salvo fired in the redevelopment war on Wednesday, every agency throughout the state is scrambling to protect or save themselves from the coming onslaught.

If you’ve read this far, you now get a treat of ballpark news! The Merc’s Tracy Seipel checked in with both Lew Wolff and San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed to catch their responses to the redevelopment shuffle. Wolff appears undeterred, still saying he can buy land if necessary, though he hasn’t actually done it. Maybe he’s waiting to find out what he might have to buy once the dust settles. Reed provided three scenarios under which the Diridon land can be made whole:

  • Wolff could buy the two parcels, and the city could sell him the rest of the ballpark site.
  • The city could sell agency assets to buy the last two parcels, then sell the entire site to Wolff.
  • The city could buy the last two parcels and lease the site to Wolff, with the city using the lease as security for financing to pay for the land.

These are all scenarios we’ve discussed here on the blog. None of what San Jose has done has been sexy or attention-grabbing. I’ve noted in the past that I could often count all of the people present at a ballpark-related session on two hands. The point is that they get things done. Every time an obstacle has come up, they’ve figured out a way to deal with it. Consider the following:

  • PG&E substation move? Not needed, ballpark configured to fit within purchased land.
  • Fire training station move? Garage requirement eliminated, no longer necessary.
  • Sharks objections? Lifted once entitlements were made for garage/commercial development on north side of HP Pavilion.
  • AT&T land stalemate? Possibly resolved when city provided entitlements to AT&T for land near Santana Row.
  • Worries about parking related EIR impacts? Not if “enough” parking is found on the other side of Guadalupe Parkway. (*shakes head*)

We’re in for an interesting rest of the year. In the morning I’ll check on what ORA and City Hall did with the $100 million.

One more thing: Billy Beane obliterates Lowell Cohn in this interview.

06.16.11
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Redevelopment is only mostly dead

Update 6/16 10:50 AM – Governor Brown has vetoed both of the main budget bills, AB 98 and SB 69. The veto came as Brown has been is discussions with Republicans over tax extensions, which were half of his inaugural budget solution. The GOP has given no quarter on these taxes, which apparently has forced Brown’s hand. The trailer bills, such as the twin redevelopment bills, are still on Brown’s desk being held back by the Democrats for the time being. They are important for funding the “cuts” half of Brown’s budget plan, so don’t expect them to go away.

At one point during the current legislative session, there were at least a dozen bills having to do with redevelopment reform. In the end, the bills that prevailed were largely influenced by Governor Jerry Brown. With AB 26 and 27 passing and almost guaranteed approval by the governor, the only thing left that can save redevelopment as we know it is a lawsuit (or 400). A successful legal challenge by cities and RDA’s would completely upend the just completed budget process, since the budget is dependent on $1.7 billion in money flowing from RDA’s to the state.

The way this works is that as of October 1, all redevelopment agencies (city or county) would be dissolved. Any projects under contract before January 1, 2011 would continue to have tax increment (now simply named property taxes) as an ongoing funding source. Anything agreed to after January 1 is subject to review in order to determine whether any bond issues violate the spirit of the law.

In addition, redevelopment agencies could be reconstituted if they can perform their activities while taking care of their ongoing debt and these new payments. If they can’t, a successor agency will be appointed whose mission is to collect the these “excess” property taxes and send it to school districts and the like. Cities can apply to reconstitute or create new RDA’s via the mechanism described in AB 27, but they are bound to the aforementioned property tax revenue distributions.

The Merc’s Tracy Seipel reports that the City of San Jose’s share for the next fiscal year is $62 million, and $15 million per year after that. That’s going to be extremely difficult for San Jose to pull off because tax increment revenues have been so poor for the last several years that there’s been little excess to use for new projects. SJRA’s practice of landbanking has also tied up funds in real estate purchases, which have allowed SJRA to act semi-speculatively when it comes to encouraging new projects. Many cities practice this, few to the extent San Jose does. Now it appears that much of the landbanked property will have to be sold to cover these new payments, not to mention any shortfalls that might occur if the property tax receipts tank.

Remember that in December, Lew Wolff renegotiated the price of the Airport West property down to $89 million, a reflection of the depressed real estate market. Wolff doesn’t have to pay until 2015. I suspect that he may have no choice but to accelerate the purchase, if only to prevent the state from forcing the city to sell another piece of land Wolff covets, such as Diridon. It may be that the creation of SJDDA insulates the city somewhat, but my understanding of the bill language is that efforts to circumvent these new powers and responsibilities could turn into an ugly tug-of-war over dollars and dirt. San Jose’s moves aren’t nearly as egregious as what’s been squirreled away in LA, but if I were Wolff or a board member of SJDDA I wouldn’t rest easy until I knew how legal the new joint powers authority was via a court ruling. There seems to be a simple solution for Wolff if he wants his ballpark in San Jose: PAY UP. (BTW, you know what else probably costs around $89 million? The Fairmont SF.)

Oakland’s situation is different in that it has much more bonding capacity and property tax revenues in several districts are good. However, it will be difficult for ORA or a successor agency to round up the money needed for Victory Court. As I noted yesterday, ORA is buying the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center for $29 million just so that the city can balance its budget. Other properties, including the Fire Training Center, were bought under similar circumstances. Those kinds of quickfixes won’t be available for much longer, especially if the lion’s share of excess property taxes ORA collects will have to go to Peralta CCD and Oakland School District (my guess: $15-25 million for the first year, $5 million annually thereafter).

The last obstacle in Brown’s quest to kill redevelopment is a legal one, which has been been telegraphed by cities and their lobbying groups for months. Their biggest problem is that so far, pro-redevelopment’s solutions have been predicated on RDA’s voluntarily sending money to the state and education as they get it. It’s kinda difficult to base a budget on voluntary payments, don’t you think? And as long as they keep up with the rhetoric about this legislation and Brown’s efforts being “unconstitutional” they’re setting themselves up for a big loss. They may prevail on technical legal terms, but even if they do it doesn’t bode well for the state, cities or counties. The budget was passed strictly on party lines, with very little give on display and numerous battles to come before Brown has to make a decision. We’re getting to the point where it’s time to start thinking about working in a post-redevelopment era. Municipalities that can’t make such a transition are in danger of being left behind.

06.14.11
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San Jose City Council passes budget

After a lengthy four hour debate, the San Jose City Council approved a $2.5 billion budget, a 10% drop from last year. The budget includes the first ever layoffs at SJPD, totaling 100 officers. The 7-4 vote included dissenters who wanted additional funding for police in light of an increasing homicide rate.

Couple that with Mayor Chuck Reed possibly backing off his pension reform ballot measure, and it looks like the political skies will be relatively clear for a ballpark referendum over the next 6-9 months. (Or at least until the next budget crisis hits next year, which would start the process all over again.) Remember that to make Opening Day 2015, shovels must be in the ground no later than late Fall 2012.