EBX: Next Tuesday Critical for Victory Court

In Robert Gammon's 92510 blog, he went into detail Friday about the upcoming Community and Economic Development Agency meeting vote on the ballpark EIR slat for next Tuesday. Gammon wrote:

The city's proposal to spend $750,000 on an environmental impact report for a new Oakland A's ballpark in Jack London Square is scheduled to go before a council committee on Tuesday. The council's Community and Economic Development Agency committee will examine the financing proposal at its regular 1:30 p.m. meeting at City Hall on December 14. The item then likely will be forwarded to the full council for approval on December 21.

Approval of the $750,000 is pivotal for the proposed Victory Court ballpark site to move forward. The ballpark cannot advance without the environmental impact report. At the very least, the council would need to approve funding for a traffic study related to the environmental impact report. But if the council decides to not spend any money, it would send a clear signal to Major League Baseball that Oakland is not serious about trying to keep the A's.

It is important that the funding is approved by the city and it just might. Yes votes on Tuesday from councilmembers Jane Brunner, Larry Reid, and Pat Kernighan will be enough to send the issue to the City Council for a Dec. 21 vote. Yes votes there from those three, along with Rebecca Kaplan and Mayor-Elect Jean Quan, would be enough to approve the measure. Gammon predicts that the $350,000 for a traffic study will get easily approved, while approval of the whole $750,000 to pay for the entire EIR is likely but not a slam dunk. Stay tuned.