Mtg. w council members all week to discuss a new agreement w/Rays. Productive so far. Despite reports, no vote happening this week.
— Rick Kriseman (@Kriseman) January 5, 2016
According to Charlie Frago (Tampa Bay Times) Kriseman, Rays president Brian Auld and City Attorney Jackie Kovilaritch met separately with two City Council members to gauge their temperature on a new deal to allow the team to look for a new stadium site outside of St. Petersburg.
Kriseman is expected to brief the remaining six council members before the board’s first meeting of the year on Thursday. In short, the mayor is making sure he has the five votes he needs to finalize a deal that would allow the team to explore new stadium sites in both Pinellas and Tampa.
While officials from both the city of St. Petersburg and the Rays have met privately over the last few months, any details of a “new” deal have been kept secret, as (per Noah Pransky, Shadow of the Stadium) the city is taking extreme steps not to create any written documents through the negotiating process to avoid creating public records.
Yet despite the lack of official information on the matter, what a new deal might look like was hinted at by council member Charlie Gerdes, who said the proposal wasn’t markedly different than the previously pitched plan which would have cost the Rays about $2-million for every year they left Tropicana Field before 2027.
I wouldn’t say there was anything brand new, Gerdes said. There’s been some refinement.
Pransky offered three other possible stadium deal scenarios:
Possibility 1: #Rays sweeten pot for #StPete despite claim they wouldn’t re-negotiate, scoring points for @Kriseman. https://t.co/sbgqm7BZlX
— Shadow of Stadium (@StadiumShadow) December 30, 2015
Possibility 2: #Rays reduce offer from Dec. ’14, but that’d be PR suicide for them & political napalm for @Kriseman. https://t.co/sbgqm7BZlX
— Shadow of Stadium (@StadiumShadow) December 30, 2015
Possibility 3: #Rays & @Kriseman come to council in two wks with exact same offer as last year. My $$’s on this one. https://t.co/sbgqm7BZlX
— Shadow of Stadium (@StadiumShadow) December 30, 2015
Still, some legwork on the part of the mayor will need to be done before any understanding is voted upon. All eight council members will be briefed through Wednesday, giving them the opportunity to voice any objections or tweaks.
Three members — Montanari, Jim Kennedy, and Steve Kornell — have voiced objections to letting the Rays search for a new home, however, Kornell is open to new ideas. Amy Foster, who initially voted against a deal, changed her position in May, citing a need to resolve the standoff and let the city move forward. The other four members — Gerdes, Karl Nurse, Darden Rice, and Lisa Wheeler-Brown — have voiced support of a deal between the city and the Rays.
Both sides indicated that any deal would probably come later in the month, although it could come as early as January 14 ― two weeks ahead of schedule (give or take).
It should be noted, Kriseman will not be in town for the council’s third meeting of the month on January 21, meaning any vote would either have to come before or after.