Will St. Petersburg officials approve Rays stadium financing?

St. Petersburg City Council members could be in for a heated discussion Thursday afternoon: What was once seen as a routine vote on financing the city’s portion of a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium and the surrounding redevelopment, known as the Historic Gas Plant District, has become more complicated.

On Tuesday, Pinellas County commissioners decided for a second time to delay a vote on financing their contribution to the $1.3 billion stadium project until Dec. 17. The election of two new commissioners, both stadium critics, mean the county likely lacks the votes to approve the bonds and would leave a $312.5 million hole in the plan for a ballpark.

Meanwhile, the Rays have publicly accused the county of upending the plan through its delays, and on Tuesday, team presidents Brian Auld and Matt Silverman wrote to the commissioners that the Rays have stopped work on the entire stadium and redevelopment project and can’t move forward with the deal that the city and county approved in July.

During a City Council committee meeting Thursday morning, Mayor Ken Welch told members that if all parties — the County Commission, City Council, Rays and development partner Hines — fulfill their obligations, “then this impactful 30-year plan can move forward.

“If any of those partners do not, then the plan will not come to fruition,” Welch said, adding that no additional funds are being requested.

Uncertainty remains about what would happen to the 65 acres of land surrounding the stadium site, which is slated to be sold to the Rays and Hines at a steep discount for redevelopment as the Historic Gas Plant District, should the stadium deal fall apart.

Read on for updates ahead of and during Thursday’s 1:30 p.m. City Council meeting:

4:40 p.m.: Welch urges approval of bonds

The bond-approval portion of the meeting has arrived, with an introduction by Mayor Ken Welch urging council members to approve the financing plan. It would allow the city to pay its share, $287.5 million for the stadium plus $142 million for the Gas Plant’s infrastructure.

For close observers, the speech would’ve sounded familiar: It was the same one Welch gave this morning at a council subcommittee meeting. He again argued that approving the bonds “meets our obligations” in the stadium deal, though as City Attorney Jackie Kovilaritch noted this morning, the city is not legally obligated to approve any bonds as a condition of the agreement reached in July.

— Jack Evans

4:15 p.m.: Council approves Trop roof spending

Council members in a 4-3 vote approved spending $23.7 million to repair the roof of Tropicana Field.

Copley Gerdes, Brandi Gabbard, Gina Driscoll and Deborah Figgs-Sanders voted for the spending; Lisset Hanewicz, John Muhammad and Richie Floyd voted against it.The four members who favored the spending argued that, based on the city’s landlord-tenant agreement with the Rays, they had no choice but to move forward. They also cited a desire to get the stadium’s 4,000 full- and part-time employees back to work.

Their decision came despite an effort put forth by Hanewicz to postpone the decision, which Floyd and Muhammad said they agreed with. Floyd said he believed the city could fulfill its obligations by beginning plans for a new roof without approving spending on materials, and Muhammad argued that it was “bass-ackwards” for the city to agree to spend tens of millions now even as the Rays signal a willingness to renegotiate the contract. All wanted to wait for more information on how much insurance and FEMA would reimburse.

”I’m voting based on what I have before me, and before me, I don’t have enough information,” Hanewicz said.

The two sides agreed on one thing: The future is uncertain — whether the Trop will be torn down in three years, whether the Rays will continue to play in St. Petersburg, what will happen in the rest of today’s meeting.

”If anyone can tell me what’s going to happen in the next two hours,” Figgs-Sanders said, “I need a lotto ticket.”

— Jack Evans

3:45 p.m.: Talk of Trop repairs turns existential

Discussions and votes explicitly concerning bond financing are still to come, but the Council is already getting to the heart of the matter: Is the deal for a new stadium dead?

That’s where attention turned amid a conversation about whether council members should approve $23.7 million in city funding for a new roof on Tropicana Field.

The city’s administration says it’s obligated to begin working on repairs under the terms of its stadium-use agreement with the Rays. But there are sore spots for commissioners: It’s unclear what insurance and FEMA reimbursements would look like, and there are still questions about how long and how expensive the total repair process would be. Council member Richie Floyd asked about alternative paths and what the Rays want, and City Administrator Rob Gerdes alluded to negotiations between the city and team but said he wouldn’t go into details or negotiate in public.

Then there’s the issue of whether the Rays, given the instability of this summer’s deal, will even stay in town long term.

”I feel like we’re judges, and here you are in divorce court,” council member Lisset Hanewicz told city officials. “We have no clarity from the parties, none whatsoever, on these issues … The bonds that we’re going to talk about later, this issue, it’s all intermingled.”

At Hanewicz’s request, Rays president Brian Auld spoke, saying he was sorry that the team’s letter all but announcing the death of the deal was taken as a threat.

”Our intention was never to threaten,” he said. “It was, in a straightforward way, to be the bearer of bad news.”

After Hurricane Milton, the team believed it could push through the damage to the Trop and keep on the path to inhabiting its dream stadium beginning in 2028, he said. But that changed when voters elected two new county commissioners critical of the stadium. And the process of repairing the Trop would likely be costlier and more time consuming than the city’s projections suggest, he added.

”I’m very sorry. I wish things were fine,” Auld said. “I don’t believe those county funds are coming, and that’s pretty clear.”

— Jack Evans

1:30 p.m.: Meeting underway

The City Council meeting has begun.

The eight-member Council is down one. Not in attendance is Ed Montanari, who represented District 3. He resigned earlier this month as part of his bid for a state House seat. Montanari was a yes vote in the Council’s 5-3 approval of the stadium and redevelopment deal earlier this year.

All seven sitting members are here, including John Muhammad, who had been scheduled to speak at a food bank opening this afternoon but clarified this morning that he wouldn’t miss the Council meeting.Among those in the crowd is Rays President Brian Auld. The team’s other president, Matt Silverman, isn’t in attendance.

— Jack Evans

Noon: Group opposed to stadium plan urges delay on bond vote

About 10 members of No Home Run, an organized group fighting for better terms of the Tampa Bay Rays stadium deal, held a press conference on the steps of St. Petersburg City Hall. Speaking to the Rays presidents letter saying they cannot absorb the costs of opening a ballpark a year later in 2029, they urged the City Council to vote Thursday to delay issuing bonds that would help pay for a $1.3 billion stadium and roads and sewers for the planned Historic Gas Plant District.

”If it is true that the Rays won’t pay the cost overruns, how can the City Council today go out and borrow money for a contract when we don’t have a deal?” asked Ron Diner, a retired Raymond James executive who leads No Home Run.

”This is no one’s fault. We’ve had two hurricanes that have caused the delays that are going to cause the cost to go up,” he said. “We need to stop, step back and start over. And when that happens, we need a fair deal.”

— Colleen Wright

9:30 a.m. City Council members have questions going into Rays stadium vote

ST. PETERSBURG — A Thursday morning discussion on the city’s pending bonds to finance a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium and infrastructure in the surrounding Historic Gas Plant Development set the table for a likely heated debate when the full City Council holds a vote on the matter later in the afternoon.

Council member Lisset Hanewicz, who is against the deal, slid back into her role as a former federal prosecutor. She confirmed with City Attorney Jackie Kovilaritch that the city is not legally obligated to approve any bonds, as they are not a condition to the agreements approved in July, and there is no deadline for either the city or the county to approve bonds by a certain date.

Hanewicz asked if the Rays wanted a penalty provision in the contract and what that would’ve looked like. Kovilaritch said there was discussion that the team could seek monetary damages in the event that the City Council did not approve the bonds, but that never made it into the contract.

“So I just want to make sure that whatever they said in their letter in terms of commitment and all that, the reality is we don’t have to approve bonds,” Hanewicz said.

Council members also had questions about what happens if they vote against the financing plan on Thursday. Read more here.

— Colleen Wright