The Angels had a great victory last week! A legal victory, that is. A victory over their host city of Anaheim. Our city.

But Mayor Ashleigh Aitken and city spokesman Mike Lyster want us to believe it was actually a great deal for us! We only have to pay owner Arte Moreno $2.75 million out of the $5 million he was suing us for, and in return we get to build the long-awaited FIRE STATION #12 in the corner of the parking lot – the fire station he wouldn’t let us build because it might make too much noise during his baseball games if there were sirens – so we Anaheim residents should be glad indeed and thankful we have such solid leaders and skilled attorneys!

But wait – THIS sentence in the Voice article really raised eyebrows:

“The city is also still required to maintain the stadium, which is set to cost at least $1.5 million over the next two years, according to city [spokesman] Lyster.”

Since when are WE responsible for Stadium Maintenance?

By now most of us who are paying attention know that the 1996 lease, negotiated under Mayor Tom Daly and still in effect, says on page 40:

“Tenant will maintain the Baseball Stadium in good condition and repair subject to ordinary wear and tear at its sole expense. The standard of maintenance to which Tenant will adhere in the maintenance of the Baseball Stadium will be at least equal to first class professional baseball stadiums.”

Why would Lyster say “the City is STILL required to maintain the Stadium?” The fact that he adds that it’ll cost us “at least $1.5 million for 2 years” makes us suspect we’re really paying Arte $2.75MM PLUS $1.5MM = $4.25 million, and the City doesn’t want to admit it.

OR, have we been unnecessarily paying for the Stadium’s maintenance for years, and nobody mentions it? So I called Lyster for clarification. What else can a citizen do?

First, Mike says we should take everything the Voice writes with a “grain of salt.” (I almost said, “yeah, if we have any salt left over after listening to the City.” But it’s true that this particular article is short and hastily written, and by a writer who doesn’t generally cover Anaheim.)

“The word MAINTENANCE is a confusing catch-all word. The team IS responsible for day-to-day maintenance. But the City has contributed $700,000 to a CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT FUND for the Stadium every year since the lease went into effect in 1996. $700k growing with CPI which is now $764k.” DID YOU KNOW THAT? And sure enough if you go to page 40 of the lease, after the two sentences we’re all familiar with, there are PAGES OF MIND-NUMBING LEGALESE about a “Capital Reserve Fund” Anaheim is required to contribute to.

No wonder we hardly make any money from the Angels. The $2.75 million they wrung out of us last week will be paid by foregoing our usual yearly receipts from them, and the Mayor estimates that’ll take 2-3 years. Which means we generally get a little less than a million a year from them, BEFORE subtracting that $764k. Mike says last year was better than usual and we got $1.4 million (minus $764k = $636k.) Some years we just barely break even. This while the team makes $117 MILLION EACH YEAR AT THE GATE ALONE. Real business geniuses we’ve got running this town, eh?

(Unconvincingly, Lyster insists it’s “not about” the money we literally get (or not) from the Angels, but how people who go to the games also spend lots of money elsewhere in Anaheim. An old weak argument not worth rehashing.)

This epically shitty 1996 lease we’re stuck with can be conveniently blamed on granddaddy Tom “Trickle-Down” Daly. This was right around the same time he convinced us to take out a bond (that we’re still paying off) to build Disney their Mickey & Friends Garage, while leasing it out to them for a dollar a year and then promising to sign it over to them when the bond’s paid off. That was the same time he let Disney off the hook for providing any housing for its workers when they did their California Adventure expansion. And then Tom went on to a long career in higher office, bankrolled by Disney and his other grateful corporate beneficiaries. Now every leader since 2000 – Pringle, Kris Murray, Sidhu, Aitken – can say, “Hey don’t look at me – Daly did it. It’s baked in the cake.”

So long story short, for the next 2-3 years we will not only be NOT MAKING ANY MONEY from the Angels being in this town, but we’ll be PAYING $760,000+ each year to have them here. And we get to build a fire station. Well…

***

How Did We Lose this Lawsuit?

It’s true that it was in writing, that Arte and his team could demand $5 million for their expenses and hassle if the 2020 Stadium sale fell through, but a lot of us thought it was pretty audacious for Arte to actually pursue that. Even though the FBI hasn’t accused the Angels team (yet) of any wrongdoing, it’s pretty hard to imagine their hands are clean in their dealings with the disgraced Sidhu and Ament. And with this suit dragging on so long, a lot of us nodded knowingly and said to each other, “Arte and his team sure don’t want to be DEPOSED in this.” (Of course assuming our attorney or law firm was actually, aggressively, pursuing the interests of Anaheim and its treasury.)

Just THREE PARAGRAPHS of historical digression, okay? Arte’s been trying to get his hands on that billion-dollar prime real estate for over a decade, as cheaply as he can. Do you remember the Council’s 2013-14 effort to lease it all to him for ONE DOLLAR A YEAR, for 60 years, to develop and profit from however he chose – an inexplicably beneficent plot defeated single-handedly by straight-arrow Mayor Tom Tait? So Arte and the Ament-led Chamber put ALL of their 2014 effort into defeating Tait and replacing him with their decrepit puppet Lucille Kring, ‘member that? At which they failed miserably, with Lucille coming in third, AFTER GALLOWAY.

So for four years Arte BODE HIS TIME (yes that is the correct grammar I looked it up) and then suddenly, one month before the very close 2018 Mayoral election between Sidhu and Aitken, shook the sports-loving city by announcing he was tearing up his lease and TAKING THE ANGELS OUT OF ANAHEIM! Within minutes Harry Sidhu was announcing “ONLY *I* CAN KEEP THE ANGELS IN ANAHEIM!” Which had the effect of getting him 472 more votes than Ashleigh and winning the election.

And so (just to remind you) the very first moment Harry was able to, he 1) re-instated Arte’s lease, with the consequence of devaluing the land greatly; 2) put HIMSELF in charge of all negotiations with the team, 3) worked out a deal with Arte so favorable to him that he felt justified in demanding $1 million of re-election campaign funds in return, meanwhile illegally sharing inside information with Arte’s team at least twice. So, reasonable people thought, HOW COULD ARTE’S HANDS BE CLEAN IN ALL THIS?

And hence, “Arte and his team are not going to want to be deposed.” But, duh. In retrospect, we forgot to also think, “There are other people in Anaheim government – staff and then-councilmembers, not yet prison-bound, who are ALSO not going to want to be deposed.” So yeah. All things considered, it was in both sides’ interest to make this lawsuit just go away without waking up too many sleeping dogs.

***

About all those Private MEETINGS.

One reform we’ve gotten from the Aitken Council which is better than nothing is that now we can see the Mayor’s and Council’s calendars, who they meet with. And, interesting, how every member of Council (except possibly Rubalcava, maybe because she was busy fighting her recall or maybe the reporting of her meeting fell through the cracks) met privately with Angels representatives in March-April. Mira nomas:

Angel/Anaheim meetings in 2024 from their public calendars:

a) April 1, 2024, Monday, 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Meeting with Angels Baseball Leadership — Anaheim City Hall
Mayor Advisory Committee Meeting — Zoom
Topic: Meeting with Angel’s baseball leadership to discuss ongoing business.
Attendees: Ashleigh Aiken [sic], Mayor; Jim Vanderpool, City Manager
John Carpino, President of Angel’s Baseball
Molly Jolly, Senior Vice President of Finance / Administration

b) March 26, 2024, Tuesday, 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Angels — Anaheim City Hall
Topic: Meeting discussing Angel Stadium.
Attendees:
Mayor Pro Tem Norma Campos Kurtz
Jim Vanderpool- City Manager
Molly Jolly- Finance & Administration Sr VP, Angels; Chip Carrey-Attorney

c) March 28, 2024, Thursday, 10am – 11am
Angels Update meeting — CMO #2 – City Hall, City Manager’s Office
TOPIC: Angels update meeting
ATTENDEES:
Stephen Faessel, Councilmember
Jim Vanderpool, City Manager
Nam Bartash, Councilmember’s Senior Policy Aide John Carpino, Angels President
Molly Jolly, Angels Senior Vice President – Finance and Adminstration

d) March 19, 2024, Tuesday, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Meeting with Angels — Anaheim City Hall
Topic: Review Stadium Contract Attendees: Council Member Natalie Meeks,
Jim Vanderpool, Anaheim City Manager John Carpino, President
Molly Jolly, Senior VP, Finance & Administration Chip Carey, Attorney

e) April 1, 2024, Monday, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Meeting with Angels Baseball — Anaheim City Hall
Topic: Angels/City Relationship History
Attendees: Carlos Leon – Councilmember
John Carpino – President, Angels Baseball; Molly Jolly – Senior VP, Angels Baseball; Greg Garcia – Assistant City Manager

f) March 28, 2024, Thursday, 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Meeting with John Carpino and Molly Jolly — Anaheim City Hall
Topic: Met with Angels President John Carpino and Molly Jolly.
Attendees: Jose Diaz
John Carpino – President of the Angels
Molly Jolly – Finance and Administration Senior Vice President

So I’m all, to Lyster, “You probably can’t tell me what all those meetings were about…” And, keenly aware that the common suspicion is a new Stadium Heist in the works, he re-assured me, “Nobody is discussing selling the Stadium right now. These meetings were about the same things you and I are discussing.” “You mean, the lawsuit?” “Yes!”

Oh.

Wait. What? Is THAT copacetic? Each councilmember meeting privately with our legal adversaries, without counsel, to jawbone about an ongoing $5 million lawsuit? THAT DOESN’T SOUND RIGHT. But I leave it with you, gentle reader, because I have two more things to tell you about…….

***

About that Assessment.

It’s an Assessment, not an Audit or an Appraisal this time, that the public has been waiting years to see (easy to get those words confused) – waiting so long that most people seem to have forgotten about it. It’ll-a been two years this November 15 since Councilman Jose Moreno asked for an Assessment of the condition of the Stadium, a motion that passed unanimously during that time when the Council was still in shock over the FBI busts of Sidhu and Ament.

Something the public should know – the condition of our most valuable public property. For one thing, whenever Arte is attempting to “take it off our hands” he likes to bitch about how ghetto it is and one step away from disintegration. Is this true? We should know. You can hear the 8-minute discussion here at 4:01:51:

https://anaheim.granicus.com/player/clip/2906?meta_id=248507 (damn doesn’t seem to embed like it used to)

Two interesting bits here: at 4:05 Anaheim Sports/Entertainment director Tom Morton informs the Council that, back in 2013, Anaheim and the Angels agreed to go halvesies on an assessment that never ended up happening – Anaheim did pay $65,000 toward that, but the RFP’s fell apart on the Angels end. And Jose observes, “So that’s ANOTHER $65,000 that Arte owes us, but moving on…”

And at the end of the item, smug acting mayor Trevor O’Neil, the world’s greatest enjoyer of his own “snark,” points out that both Jose’s items that night (he’d also held a discussion on the Mickey & Friends giveaway to Disney) dated back to 1996 “and who was Mayor THEN?” – his point apparently being either that it was a Democrat’s fault, or that it wasn’t his dear friend Sidhu’s fault, or both. Like I said.

Two people who HAVEN’T forgotten about the unfinished 2022 assessment are our friend Marc Herbert and Angels-friendly Times journalist Bill Shaikin, who told Marc last week,

“I have asked for a copy of the stadium assessment on multiple occasions. I have been told it is not ready and there is more work to be done. I tried to check that with the contractor but, unsurprisingly, they did not get back to me.”

Well, Lyster tells me (That should really be a Lou Reed song, “Lyster Tells Me”) that a “walk-through assessment” was already done, but they’re still working on the detailed, final version. Wow, it’s bound to be the most thorough assessment ever, at 20 months so far! Well, maybe most people have forgotten about it by now, but not all of us!

***

About that Fire Station.

Anaheim has been wanting to build a new fire station, “Fire Station #12,” in the corner of the lot we’re leasing to Arte, for years. It’s all planned, approved, budgeted for, it’ll be right in the middle of the Platinum Triangle’s yuppie population explosion and scant minutes from the arid flammable Hills, and would be located a few football fields away from the actual Stadium:

But Arte Moreno has refused to let us build a fire station there (somehow he wields THAT MUCH POWER in Anaheim) on the pretext that, um, it would make TOO MUCH NOISE during his games. Jesus Christ, really? Have you ever been to one of those games? Now it’s clear he was holding the fire station hostage in the lawsuit negotiations, and now it is our booby prize. We’ll have it up and running by 2026. Doesn’t it almost make you wish the Stadium would catch fire? (With nobody getting burned up of course – we are not monsters.)

Well, that’s about all I know about this lawsuit and its settlement, but if I may, I will conclude with two brief observations:

1. It’s Tom “Trickle-Down” Daly’s World; you and I just live in it.

AND

2. Arte Moreno – What a dick.

Vern out.