By Brooklynn Wong
No news is redundant news, said most of the Anaheim City Council last week regarding the Angel Stadium talks.
The Council has it as a regularly agendized item to receive updates on baseball stadium developments at City Council Meetings.
However last week, at the March 19 meeting, when the “update” was that there was nothing new to report, most of the Council let on that they were tired of receiving these non-updates, and responded in different ways.
Some proposed that this should not be a regularly agendized item, that the Council should only receive updates when there are some.
Others, namely Councilman Jordan Brandman, said this should serve as a prompting to get something done regarding the stadium, and quick, so this item does not need to continue being on the agenda, though for now he was “not in support of unagendizing” it.
Brandman and Councilman Jose Moreno were the two in favor of keeping Angel Stadium updates on the agenda regularly in some form, and appealed to transparency.
Moreno said, “I’d rather not go dark, Mr. O’Neil,” when Councilman Trevor O’Neil proposed not hearing anything until there is something to report. Moreno expressed concern that the Mayor and others in on the talks would charge ahead without consulting the rest of the Council or keeping them updated. He suggested that the item be kept on the agenda once a month.
However in the end, it was proposed that the item be kept off the agenda until there is an actual update, at which point the City Manager will bring it forward. The Council voted 5-2 in favor of this, with Moreno and Brandman voting against.
The City of Anaheim and the Angels are currently in talks over whether or not to extend their partnership and sign a long-term agreement, keeping the Major League Baseball team in Anaheim, or whether the Angels would relocate.
The city and the team failed for years to come to an agreement, and recently a one-year stadium lease was signed to allow the team to stay through the 2020 baseball season, but the future beyond that is unclear.
Mayor Harry Sidhu feels strongly about keeping the team in Anaheim, but other teams, namely Long Beach, have stepped up and expressed interest in wooing the team away.
