By Brooklynn Wong
At last Tuesday’s Anaheim City Council Meeting, it was determined that Mayor Harry Sidhu and City Manager Chris Zapata and City Attorney Rob Fabela will make up the team that will spearhead the negotiations with the Angels to attempt to keep them right where they are.
Just who should be on this team has been a point of controversy.
A resident named Bob Donelson shared a popular sentiment when he said he would like Councilman Jose Moreno on the negotiation team rather than the mayor who had, in Donelson’s words, “tried to put himself on it.”
The Major League Baseball team has played in the stadium in Anaheim since 1966, but the team was more eponymous with Los Angeles than Anaheim until the late ‘90s, when the City of Anaheim paid $30 million to include “Anaheim” in both the stadium and team names. From 1997-2004 the team was officially known as the “Anaheim Angels,” and from 2005-2015, the “Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.” They went back to simply “Los Angeles Angels” in 2016.
The team’s current lease has now ended and a new one is in negotiations, that may take the team to a whole new city altogether.
Long Beach has made the strongest bid thus far, pitching a brand new waterfront stadium.
Some residents have questioned Sidhu’s ties to the Angels in the way of campaign donations. Representatives from the Angels did contribute to Sidhu’s re-election campaign.
Some of the City Council members questioned whether there even needed to be a City Council representative in the Angels talks, and if so, why it needed to be Sidhu, or whether it ought to be more than one City Council member.
At a City Council meeting in June, Sidhu first attempted to put himself on the team, but there was enough pushback that it was agendized for last week’s meeting so there could be more discussion on it, as well as a vote.
It passed in the end, 5-2, with Moreno and Councilwoman Denise Barnes voting against.
But it did not come without argument.
Moreno stated that he and Barnes are the only Council members who have not received campaign contributions from anyone affiliated with the Angels.
Sidhu and other city staff will continue meeting with the team, and negotiations are expected to continue into next year.
Mayor Sidhu helped to work out a lease extension with the team earlier this year, that will keep them in Anaheim until 2020.
The Anaheim City Council will next meet Tuesday, July 30 at 5 p.m.
