County offers tentative ballpark support
Supervisors’ approval of negotiations with A’s is nonbinding and can be rescinded at any time
Described as “historic” by Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, the plan the Alameda County Board of Supervisors opted into that will pave the way for a new waterfront ballpark is no guarantee that bulldozers will start digging up the dirt at Howard Terminal anytime soon, or that the team will stay put and stop flirting with Las Vegas.
Significant as it was in giving a much needed boost to ongoing negotiations between the A’s and the city of Oakland, the supervisors’ 4-1 vote late Tuesday is nonbinding and can be rescinded if efforts to hammer out a public financing plan and a development agreement with the baseball team unravels in the coming months.
Meanwhile, more hurdles await. The city is trying to complete a final environmental impact on the proposed 35,000-seat ballpark and surrounding village of 3,000 homes, offices, restaurants, hotels, a performing arts center and public parks by the end of the year.
Other regulatory agencies, such as the state Department of Toxic Substances and the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, will have to chime in, too. The Port of Oakland will need to determine whether the project is compatible with seaport operations, which port workers and shipping companies already are insisting isn’t the case.
But in the aftermath of a seven-hour meeting that focused heavily on various analyses of the financial risks and rewards of the county joining the city in forming a tax assessment district to pay for the project’s infrastructure, Oakland leaders were glowing.
“Tonight’s vote by the Alameda County Board of Supervisors is a historic action that creates a clear path to keep the A’s rooted in Oakland and build a world-class waterfront ballpark district that will benefit Bay Area residents for generations to come,” Schaaf said in a statement immediately after the supervisors’ vote.
The supervisors struck a less ebullient tone.
“I think our willingness to at least go further based on the motion gives the county the opportunity to do more due diligence around this,” Supervisor Nate Miley said.
A’s president Dave Kaval could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Until late summer, he had publicly been pressuring the city to commit to funding the Howard Terminal infrastructure and forming a second district encompassing Jack London Square and a section of West Oakland to pay for the sidewalks, pedestrian overpasses, street work and other improvements needed to get people to and from the ballpark site. The city has refused to form the second district.
Kaval said during the meeting that ongoing negotiations between the city and the team “involve things like infrastructure, whether or not the county will participate, community benefits, affordable housing and then some of the provisions around transportation.”
“The affirmative vote is a positive step,” Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said in an email to the Las Vegas Review-Journal after the vote. “The A’s will continue to pursue the Oakland project as well as the Las Vegas alternative.”
The board’s vote, with Supervisor Keith Carson dissenting, signals the county’s intention to contribute a substantial portion of property tax growth generated by the Howard Terminal project over the next 45 years to pay for the roads, utilities, soil cleanup and other property improvements needed to prepare the site for construction. Dozens of people who participated in the meeting spoke for and against the move.
For months, city officials have implored the county to participate in the financing plan, which they said is crucial to keeping the A’s in Oakland because the team has flatly said it doesn’t intend to remain at the Coliseum site after its lease expires in three years unless a deal is reached. The team has been threatening to move to another area, possibly Las Vegas, if it’s not reimbursed for project infrastructure costs.
Without the county’s share of additional tax revenue, city officials have said there wouldn’t be enough money to reimburse the A’s for funding upfront the estimated $400 million in infrastructure work. The largely vacant property currently generates about $70,000 a year in property taxes for the county and won’t produce the millions needed until the ballpark and village are built.
The supervisors balked in June when they were asked to go along, saying they felt rushed and wanted staff to further explore the financial terms between the city and the A’s.
Tuesday night, the supervisors still had plenty of questions and reservations. In voting to move forward, they called for the A’s to pay for a financial analysis of how an infrastructure tax district would affect the county.
If they don’t like what that analysis shows, the county could refuse to opt into the tax-financing district, which has not yet been officially approved. To form such a district, the city has to adopt its own “resolution of intention,” and both the city and the county would have to approve ordinances allowing the bulk of the additional property taxes to be captured by the new district.
Carson, whose district includes the Howard Terminal site, said the county faces other pressing needs that require funding.
“Once we take a political nonbinding position, it’s almost impossible to take this away,” Carson said. “We’re really risking taking away dollars from (somewhere else).”
An analysis by the city’s hired consulting firm, Century Urban, found that the county would get roughly $67 million in new one-time revenue during the Howard Terminal construction and $5.4 million in annual revenue after that.
But county Administrator Susan Muranishi’s office estimated the county would net just over $2 million per year from the project and end up contributing more for infrastructure than the city.
Schaaf pointed out that the city also intends to fund the infrastructure work by using federal and state transportation funds, as well as a limited obligation bond that voters would have to approve.
In a statement after the board vote, the East Oakland Stadium Alliance — which consists largely of port workers and shipping companies — said the supervisors “should not commit millions of public tax dollars toward a private project that will displace West Oakland residents, put thousands of working-class union port jobs at risk, and jeopardize the county’s long-term financial stability.”
Supervisor Wilma Chan said that although she’s concerned about those and other issues, “This is a nonbinding intent. There will be future votes, or we can step away.”