49ers blast Santa Clara for its ‘fuzzy’ math
Bitter war of words, er, numbers: Will team be paying $10.5M more or $180M more over course of lease?
After it became public that the San Francisco 49ers’ rent for Levi’s Stadium will go up slightly as part of an arbitration agreement, the team and several of Santa Clara’s City Council members began a bitter war of words.
The agreement — as reported by the Mercury News on Friday — ends a years-long legal battle and directs the 49ers to pay $262,000 more each year on a 40-year lease to the city’s stadium authority, which is essentially overseen by the mayor and council members. Right now, the team is paying $24.5 million a year. The new payment will be $24.762 million. That works out to about $10.5 million more total over the course of the lease.
But in a series of press releases over the weekend culminating in a series of media interviews Monday afternoon, Mayor Lisa Gillmor and her allies on the council tried to paint the agreement as a $180 million victory against the 49ers.
And, here is where the battle of words begins.
At an earlier stage in the dispute, the 49ers had suggested that because the final tab to build the stadium had come in millions of dollars under budget and initial revenues were higher than expected, the team should get a rent reduction to $20.25 million.
The mayor argued that the additional $170 million that could have been lost had a reduction in rent taken place should be added
to the $10 million the stadium authority actually stands to gain for a total of $180 million.
Except the $20.25 million rent was never a real figure. It was a suggestion.
“This all could have been lost,” Gillmor told the Mercury News Monday afternoon in her office flanked by council allies Debi Davis, Kathy Watanabe and Teresa O’Neill, “which I think is getting lost in the media.”
Gillmor, with the help of political “fixer” Sam Singer, who is earning $250 an hour and mileage fees, had summoned local reporters to City Hall where she held individual interviews.
During the Mercury News’ interview with Gillmor, the mayor said she was issuing a “challenge” to the 49ers to waive the lease agreement’s confidentiality to achieve “full transparency on the significance of this victory.”
The team isn’t having it. In a statement, the team’s
vice president of affairs Rahul Chandhok, blasted the request, saying, “The stadium lease is a matter of public record. Attempting
to give it new life in the media is a distraction tactic to avoid questions about her use of public funds for spin doctor Sam Singer.”
And he blamed Gillmor for using “fuzzy math” in her favor, pointing out that in addition to touting the questionable $180 million
figure, one of the early press releases from the city had erroneously said the rent would increase by $238,000 rather than $262,000.
A spokeswoman for the city could not immediately say how many billable hours Singer’s team had worked so far. Singer said he did not immediately have an exact number of hours available, but said the stadium authority was still well under the $100,000 maximum allowed by the contract.
On Monday, Councilwoman Patricia Mahan, who regularly spars with Gillmor and her allies, also called out Gillmor’s math.
“That’s just sort of a phantom number,” Mahan said. “I guess the $180 million is what could have been possible if there had been a rent reduction, but after two years of litigation, what was decided by the arbitrator is simply a one percent increase for 40 years.”
Asked to respond to Mahan’s criticism, Gillmor said, “I didn’t know about that.”
Still, Gillmor, who is up for reelection as mayor this November, hailed the arbitration agreement as a victory for the city.
“We’re very pleased,” she said, “with the outcome.”