St. Pete City Council will not be voting on a revised Rays deal anytime soon. City Council Chair Charlie Gerdes said instead he’s going to move forward with a request to workshop possible problems still lingering on the mind of five council members who voted no last December on Mayor Rick Kriseman’s original deal.
“The mayor had some conversations with some of my colleagues and there’s just not a high enough confidence level that two of them will change their votes,” Gerdes said.
In his updated memorandum of understanding, Kriseman addressed one issue he saw as a key to winning over at least two of the previous no-votes. The new deal ensures that if the Rays choose to terminate their lease prematurely with the city, St. Pete will retain 100 percent of the development rights on Tropicana Field land.
Under the previous MOU, the team would have retained rights to half of all revenue from new development whether or not they intended to break the lease.
There were a couple of other small changes to the MOU including a requirement that the Rays clearly lay out criteria in a new stadium location and include St. Petersburg in their search.
The deal would still provide the same monetary contribution to the city from the Rays and would only allow the team to look at potential sites in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties.
Under the agreement, the Rays would have had to pay the city a sliding annual fee for each year they played ball outside Tropicana Field for the duration of its contract. That would be $4 million through 2018, $3 million from 2019-2022 and then $2 million from 2023-2026. The total paid to the city was estimated to be about $20 million if they moved.
After Kriseman announced he would be sending a revised agreement to City Council, council member Steve Kornell said that if the new agreement didn’t include an increase in compensation to the city he would still be a no-vote.
Amy Foster said the development rights help and she liked the addition that the Rays would have to provide more detail on their search criteria, but stopped short of whether or not that would be enough to change her no to a yes.
The other no-votes were Bill Dudley, Wengay Newton and Jim Kennedy.
Gerdes said he hopes to have a workshop scheduled within the next 30-days.
“Without knowing for sure if it’s going to pass I think the right thing to do is have a workshop,” Gerdes said.
One concern is that waiting for a workshop could mean the city will have to wait until baseball season is over before getting back to the negotiating table with the Rays. Opening day is a week away.
“Once they start playing, their plates are going to be full with baseball stuff and so getting them to perhaps look at whatever changes or issues come out of this workshop could be difficult,” Gerdes said.
Despite that concern, Gerdes remains hopeful that a deal can be reached without having to wait until the next off-season.
“It comes down to whether we want to have another under-the-microscope vote or do we want to have a discussion?”
