Bazooka Jerry

There’s a Glendale City Council workshop meeting today at 1:30 pm to discuss the Renaissance (RSE) proposed deal with the city to manage their arena with the Coyotes as the anchor tenant.

The special workshop was called by mayor Jerry Weiers, who then made the media rounds to explain the purpose of the meeting was to offer the public the opportunity to educate themselves on the points of the deal.

To paraphrase a classic line in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”, strange things are afoot at the City Hall.

Bazooka To The Head

Last evening, mayor Weiers began his TV campaign to submarine the RSE deal with an appearance on the local NBC affiliate. After a relatively balanced intro piece from Brahm Resnik, Jerry was on with Mark Curtis for a three minute segment. Click here for the video attached to Paul Giblin’s story.

During the interview (at about 1:22), Mark Curtis asked Weires “Do you, mayor, feel like the NHL has put a gun to your head?”. While I suppose a less inflammatory way of asking that question could have been found, it’s a legitimate question. Weiers twiddled his thumbs and answered: “Maybe a bazooka”, eliciting a polite chuckle from Curtis.

He continues “You know, procrastination and then all of a sudden then it becomes my problem doesn’t make sense to me.”

I have also maintained the NHL may be guilty of presenting a buyer to Glendale later than they should. Since then, however, there have been delays from the city that are purposeful and certainly appear to be intended to derail the RSE deal.

We Need Another Week

The first delay the mayor neglected to mention, or accept responsibility for, was the extra week granted to Beacon to complete their bidding process. Until those “non-hockey” bids were in house, no serious consideration could be give to the RSE bid that had been presented on May 28, before the extended deadline granted to Beacon.

We could debate the validity of the two remaining non-ridiculous bids, but that isn’t the point. The point is the mayor is making the rounds, placing the blame on the NHL and the Councilmembers who worked to force the vote he was working to delay. Weiers is careful to deny he is trying to delay anything, but that appears to be untrue based on rumblings in city hall.

Paper Shuffling

Even more egregious than the above intentional delay of substantive negotiations is the handling of “paperwork” between RSE and the city.

Keep in mind that a vetted framework for a deal, already through the legal beagle stage TWICE, was available to the city with the Hockey Partners (Jamison) deal. So, rather than reinventing the wheel it’s highly likely that paperwork was the basis for the current RSE deal.

Remember the attorney’s office is in a bit of disarray with the departure of Craig Tindall.

RSE met with the city attorney on June 12 (all dates approximate) to discuss the contract. Rather than discuss the vetted contract with changes, a lesson in Goldwater was offered instead. So, little or no progress and the fault is with the city.

RSE was going to meet with Glendale attorneys on June 14 to receive the RSE deal back from the city with the city’s changes. The meeting was rescheduled by the city for the 17th.

The city did not deliver the document with the changes on the June 14 date nor the agreed upon extended date (June 17).

The city attorney finally delivered the documents with their changes to RSE on June 24, TEN days after their originally agreed upon date and in the midst of growing threats from the NHL to move the team.

RSE returned that document with their requested changes on June 25, less than a 24 hour turnaround.

Seems clear who to point the finger at.

Want The Credit? Accept The Responsibility

So who is delaying, mayor?

Once the NHL and RSE showed up in Glendale, it should have been full speed ahead for everybody in City Hall. It was for a selected few, prodigious amounts of effort have gone into making this deal get to the point where it will be ready for a vote.

It’s disingenuous at best to point the public finger at the NHL for undue pressure without accepting responsibility for pushing the deadline.

An extra week to produce two legitimate bids that have NOT been made public yet is ludicrous. When this is over, hopefully some accounting from Beacon as to their vetting process as it relates to their invoice will be forthcoming.

While the mayor aw shucks’ed it on TV, maintaining “I’m just one vote”, the fact is he DOES have the juice to manipulate the City Council agenda, among other things. He also has the ability to insist that his legal department finish up the work they promised in a timely fashion, which he did not.

Watch the spin from the mayor will be all directed at the CMs that forced his hand on this vote over the next days.

The next time you hear any word like “delay” or “bazooka” come out of anyone’s mouth, remember the number of days that were burned by departments in the city and wonder who made that happen.

It wasn’t the CMs that wanted this vote.