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We love the OC Weekly, especially their caricatures. Thank you, guys! This is Angels owner Arte Moreno enjoying Anaheim Council beneficence.
It’s urgent for anyone who cares about Anaheim and her finances to show up and make yourselves heard this coming Tuesday. And why? Bear with me a moment:
On January 15, 2019, this council in a 5-2 vote, in an act of extreme gratitude to their campaign donors Angels Baseball, swindled the people of Anaheim in several ways:
- Their vote “encumbered” the property on which the Angels Stadium stands, reducing its value by $100 million dollars;
- Their vote perpetuated, for at least ten more years, the sweetheart, no-rent, 1996 deal that Angels billionaire owner Arte Moreno has already enjoyed for 23 years; and
- Their vote also gave Arte ten more years to freely “shop around” for any city that could conceivably give him an even better deal, while WE have no such options.
But the public, and apparently even some of the councilmembers, believed they were just renewing the old lease for fourteen more months – a stupid enough giveaway already. That item, Item #27, was deceptively entitled, “to extend the termination date of the lease by fourteen months” – that is, to nullify Arte’s decision to terminate a few months earlier. And that’s how the staff talked about it throughout the discussion, as well as the five-member majority that voted yes. Did THEY all know what they were really voting on?
If the public had known the colossal scale of the giveaway that day, there would have been a lot more protest, and certain councilmembers would have put the whole thing on hold and demanded public input. The whole thing last January was a HUGE bait-and-switch.
Now, eight months later, we have a chance to revisit that meeting as, in item 31 of Tuesday’s Consent Calendar, the Council decides whether to APPROVE THE TRANSCRIPT of the meeting. Some council member needs to first pull item 31 so it can be debated, and then let’s hear which of our seven “leaders” actually intended to lose $100 million of Anaheim taxpayers’ money, while continuing to let Arte enjoy the stadium rent-free, indefinitely. January’s item #27 should be voted on again, with proper public notice.
The dishonesty of January’s vote was reminiscent of the way Mayor Sidhu constantly claims to have come to this country “with only $40 in my pocket,” implying that was his total wealth. In fact, Harry had considerable funds elsewhere, just not in his pocket.
In any case, if the Council refuses to void their deceptive January vote and hold a new, properly noticed vote, that would be grounds for an expensive legal challenge.
[Hat-tip to “ANAHEIM HOME” – good looking out!]
TRAINWRECK!!!
Harry Sidhu, read Donald Trump’s book “The Art of The Deal” and has taken it literally, word for word, and he believed every bit of it.
I’ve never heard of ‘Approve the transcript” before. (I’ve heard of “approve the minutes,” but that doesn’t take eight months.) What happens if they don’t approve the transcript — does the agreement go away? Or is this just about finding who was sane — let me guess, Moreno and Barnes? — and among those who weren’t sane, who was sociopathic and who was just delusional?
Yeah, yeah, I shoulda written “minutes.” I was in a hurry.
And yeah, eight months seems a long time, but apparently that’s how long it’s been taking to transcribe each Anaheim council meeting.
Imagine the reaction if, under Tait’s administration, it had taken eight months to approve minutes. Jerbal would be calling for him to be arrested and kept in Guantanamo!