Milestones 7/15/09

By Miles H Barber
There seems to be some confusion in Santa Clara.
While this may not be unusual when it comes to politics it is very unusual when the confusion is the result of media created perception.
Somehow, a few people in town, including Councilwoman Jamie McLeod seem to be confused about a Senate Bill introduced by Senator Elaine Alquist that allegedly would change Santa Clara’s City Charter.
First, let’s be clear. This is not totally true.
Here is the issue.
Currently our city charter requires our city to obtain three bids for any public project and award the bid to the lowest bidder. So far so good!
Our City Council has voted 5-2 to put the building of a new stadium in Santa Clara to the voters.
If you have not been in a coma for the past two years, you already knew this. However, you might not be aware that there are only 31 NFL football stadiums in America.
This is the problem.
Only a few companies in the entire country are qualified to build football stadiums, in fact, the real number is two.
Now, fast forward a few months and assume you are ready to vote on the stadium proposal.
The proposal passes. According to our Charter, we would have to go out for bids and take the lowest bidder.
This of course opens the door for any “wannabe big time contractor” to submit a bid.
Legally, we would have to accept the lowest bid which is awarded to Slippery Hands Construction (SHL).
Ok, so we take the lowest bid and what happens? SHL only misses the actual costs by $50 million.
Thanks to Jennifer Sparacino and Ron Garrett, our financial manager guru’s at City Hall, the 49ers by agreement would have to pay the costs of the overruns. Good for the City, not so good for the 49ers.
To keep the SHL’s and other non-qualified companies out of the bidding process, the 49ers (who are paying the cost over-run bills) want to limit their expense exposure to trusted and proven stadium contractors.
Therefore, the 49ers would like the two companies in all of America who are capable of building a 68,000 seat stadium be the two general contractors selected.
This seems logical.
That is, unless you are opposed to the stadium regardless of how good it is for our City and for our schools.
So, it appears to be the issue with Councilwoman McLeod. She was opposed to the stadium at the time the Council voted and she continues to object by Mcleoding the issues.
The Senate bill as proposed is a project specific bill. It does not change the city charter for anything other than football stadiums and it would apply to all cities in California.
We have not built a new NFL stadium in California in over 30 years. So, it’s not something that is going to affect any city on a weekly basis.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell recently stated that in all his years in being associated with the NFL he has never seen a better deal for a city than the one put together by Santa Clara.
That should clear up the confusion.
Hopefully the dark clouds of Mcskepticism will also fade quickly and we can build a Council team for objectives rather than obstructions.

Miles H. Barber can be reached at SCWeekly2004@yahoo.com