Chargers’ future still unclear, committee meets to discuss options

SAN DIEGO (KUSI) – The Chargers’ point-man on stadium issues, Mark Fabiani, went before the Mayor’s Advisory Committee Monday and presented four principles to help the task force move forward with plans.

The principles were:

1. The task force should resist the political pressure it will feel to make a proposal simply for the sake of making a proposal.

2. The Chargers present no intention of quietly participating in any effort to provide political cover for elected officials.

3. The Chargers have asked that any proposal that emerges from the task force’s work should be subjected to serious, real world stress tests. Further, the proposals by the task force should pass three real world tests: 1) Have a strong chance of being approved by two-thirds of the voters, 2) The mayor and a strong majority of the City Council should be prepared to support the recommendations of the task force and finally, 3) The proposal should be able to recognize the economic realities of the local marketplace and of the NFL.

The third test is perhaps the one that carries the majority of the weight because the true cost of a new stadium must be taken into consideration. Across the country new NFL stadiums, from San Francisco to Minnesota to Atlanta, are costing from $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion to build.

4) Any plan the task force recommends should be one that can actually be implemented by the people now in elected office in the City of San Diego. Fabiani told the committee that he understands the pressure the committee is under, but at this point in time there is no publicly acceptable solution to the stadium issue in San Diego.

According to Fabiani, whatever the committee recommends has to work in the real world, saying they tried for 13 years with the best consultants money could buy and came up short.

“It is not enough to make a proposal that looks good on paper or that some expert might say could work,” Fabiani said.

Committee Chair Adam Day has a group of volunteers working with him.

They have no budget, but feel the information the Chargers provide and the wealth of research material is sufficient to answer where the stadium should be and what it will cost.

“Our objective is to come forward with something that settles this once and for all. Obviously it’s something the voters need to support,” Day said.

What the Chargers worry about is the political pressure for the committee to propose something that shows the politicians are trying.

“We are concerned that this process might not be designed to produce a real result but instead might be designed to put the team in a bad light to be able to say, ‘Hey, they wanted to leave anyway, so they didn’t want to work with us,'” Fabiani said.

Two of the four principles dealt with the politics of this.

The third said there has to be strong support from the mayor and the council.

The fourth is, can the recommendation be implemented by those in office today?

‘If they fall away from these principles, for example if they propose something that tries to skirt the 23rds in the California constitution, that’s not gonna work,” Fabiani added. “A lot of them we completely agree with, there’s others that we’re going continue to test and question,” Day said.

Then there is the pressure coming from Rams’ owner, Stan Kroenke who appears set on moving his team to Los Angeles.

“We also made clear that this is a tough year for us because our hand is being forced by what the Rams owner Stan Kroenke is doing in Los Angeles, and we have to be very up front with the task force, with our fans, with the entire community on that,” Fabiani said.

“We as a committee expressed our respect and agreement with that concern. It’s something we have to keep an eye on,” Day added.

Being up front means if this doesn’t work, the only option left for the Chargers is to head north.